Without Mercy

by Lisa Jackson

  Trent slowly guided his flashlight’s beam down Maeve’s body, pausing on her torso and legs. “Jesus. Even with her snow gear on you can tell she was worked over. She’s got other wounds.” He glanced up at Jules and when they connected, she felt sure they had the same soul-numbing thought.

  The killer could still be here.

  Inside.

  Waiting.

  Jules’s insides quivered. Dear God, even now, the beast who had attacked Maeve could be watching their every move. Silently Trent touched Jules’s shoulder gently, and she, understanding, released the gun to him, an “ace” marksman according to Reverend Lynch’s records.

  Jules’s heart was knocking so wildly it echoed in her brain, pounded against her skull. Who had done this to Maeve? And why? Oh, God, why? Swallowing back her fear, she stared deep into the darkest corners of the stable. Anyone could be hiding in the weird, unearthly shapes of the equipment and tools tucked against the walls and hanging from the rafters. The killer could be crouched low. Waiting. Observing. He could be in one of the stalls, or in the shadowy feed bins or above, in the hayloft …

  She glanced upward, imagining the crime scene, seeing, in her mind’s eye, the very space where Nona Vickers had been so viciously and cruelly hung from the rafters, her naked body displayed almost as if the killer were mocking them. She shuddered, spying Trent who was already on the ladder, pistol in his hand.

  Jules cringed as he climbed to the next rung. If the murderer had a gun, they were easy targets with their bobbing flashlights. She took a step toward him, but he shook his head, silently urging her to stay put.

  She froze as he reached the top and disappeared into the darkness, leaving Jules, nerves stretched to the breaking point, to listen to his footsteps moving across the old floorboards above her head.

  She started to follow.

  The black horse snorted loudly and she froze. She saw his muscles quiver and instantly turned, searching for a sign of anyone else in the stable. The other animals, too, were anxious, pawing and whinnying, nervous in their stalls.

  She took a step toward the ladder again.

  “No one up here,” Trent said, then dropped to the floor, landing on the spot where Drew Prescott had been left for dead.

  Jules let out the breath she’d been holding and rubbed her shoulders.

  The big horse began to pace, steely hooves scraping the concrete of the stable floor near the far wall.

  “He’s not happy,” Jules said, forcing a joke that fell flat.

  “None of us are. Stay here.” Trent started for the horse. An easy target. Jules’s stomach was in knots. At any second she expected a shot to ring out and Trent to fall to the floor. “I’ll take care of him,” he said without raising his voice. To the gelding, he added, “Take it easy, big guy. It’s okay. Sure it is.”

  Like hell, Jules thought but held her tongue as Trent reached the frightened animal and ran experienced hands over the black horse’s quivering hide.

  “It’s all right,” Trent said in a low tone to the horse, lying through his teeth again. It wasn’t all right; nothing was. Nothing would ever be.

  “That’s it … everything’s okay, Omen.”

  Omen? Hearing the gelding’s name triggered the memory of the note she’d seen in Maeve’s purse earlier in the day when the girl had been so distraught over Ethan Slade. Could the note have been about the horse? She glanced at the girl’s dead body again and felt cold as death.

  “There ya go … see? It’s not so bad,” Trent said as he reached the horse, grabbed Omen’s halter, and clucked softly. “Come on, now.” To Jules, he said, “He’s got a shallow cut, bleeding on his right shoulder, probably where he scraped the edges of the stall gate.” To the horse, he added, “You’ll live.” Unlike Maeve. Or Drew. Or Nona. Or, probably, Lauren. Still standing so near the dead girl, Jules couldn’t help but wonder who would be next. Whom would the killer target? Like pictures in a kaleidoscope, the students’ faces slid behind her eyes, morphing into each other: little Ollie Gage, brooding Crystal Ricci, Keesha Bell with her neat cornrows and quick smile, or Shay, her misunderstood sister. Jules swallowed hard, her fear mounting, dread racing through her bloodstream.

  “We have to stop him,” she whispered and even as she said it, she wondered who the killer was, her brain racing to connect the dots of a puzzle that wasn’t yet making any sense: Who? Why? To what damned end?

  The questions blazing through her mind, she watched Trent latch the big gelding into a stall.

  Once Omen was secure in his box, Trent paused to sweep his light over the next stall, the one from which, presumably, the terrorized gelding had broken free.

  Who would do this?

  Take the time to stage the scene? Blood on the floor, burned straw, twin trails of heel marks visible, evidence that Maeve had been dragged from the door of the open stall to the spot where she died.

  None of it made any sense. If the killer wanted Maeve dead, why not just kill her and be done with it. Instead, the whole murder seemed drawn out and orchestrated.

  “The fire was in here,” Trent told her, his flashlight’s beam still crawling along one stall. “In Omen’s box.” He was staring at the floor, his frown barely visible in the dark. “But it looks like it was contained to this area, not allowed to burn any further. The killer took the time to set it and then douse it with the fire extinguisher.”

  “Unless Maeve lit the fire.”

  “Or someone else? A third party? Shit, who knows? But there’s blood in here.”

  “From the horse?”

  “Nah. It’s too much; his scrape wasn’t that deep.” Trent slid the beam of his flashlight over the opening to the stall. “Horsehair here, caught on the side rails. And … oh, what’s this?” he asked, then said, “Looks like a knit cap, half burned.”

  “Pink?” Jules asked, knowing the answer. “Maeve was wearing one earlier.”

  “Bingo.”

  Jules shuddered. A graphic, painful image of Maeve’s hat, perched upon her head, being set afire to singe her scalp and burn her hair came to mind. Dear God, what cruelty. What kind of deranged monster would do such a thing? The cold of the night, the evil that lurked in this building, seeped deep into her soul. “So the blood in the stall is Maeve’s?” she asked, hazarding a glance at Maeve’s dead body. Poor, poor thing.

  “Or her killer’s.”

  As he walked down the aisle Trent swept the beam of his flashlight into each of the stalls. Absently, he touched the noses of the nervous horses who plunged their heads over the top rails as he passed. Their large eyes were nervous, white rimmed, their nostrils flared at the lingering scent of smoke and metallic odor of the spilled blood.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” he said to Scout, whose pale blue eyes looked eerie in the darkness. He tossed his white head and snorted as if calling Trent the liar he was. “Hey … Shhh.” He scratched the pinto’s forehead until the horse calmed a bit.

  Satisfied that the animals were safe, Trent found his cell phone, and said to Jules, “I’ve got to call Meeker.” He punched in the number, waited, then swore under his breath. “Oh, hell. Still can’t get through. Guess we can’t count on the cavalry.”

  Jules’s heart sank. Was the killer finished? Or, she wondered in horror, were there more bodies?

  The door to the stables flew open. A rush of frigid air swept inside, tossing bits of hay into the air and cutting through Jules’s jacket.

  She jumped and bit back a scream.

  “Get down!” Trent yelled at her. Crouching swiftly, he leveled his gun at the doorway.

  A dark figure carrying a large battery powered light in front of him. “Hey!”

  “Stop!” Trent warned, his gun and flashlight trained on Bert Flannagan’s shocked face.

  “What the hell?” Flannagan stopped dead in his tracks, a large survival lantern in one hand, his rifle strapped across his back. “What’s going on in here? A fire?” The lantern’s harsh glow washed over the burned straw on t
he floor to stop at Maeve’s ashen-faced corpse and the blood puddled around her. “Holy Christ!” His Adam’s apple worked, then he swung his dark gaze at Trent. “What the fuck happened here?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Hell, no!” His lips tightened, and he appeared agitated, even desperate. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

  “We just found her,” Jules said, wary.

  “You have any idea why there was a fire in Omen’s stall?” Trent cut in.

  “Fire?” Flannagan repeated, as if just noticing the singed straw and the strong odor of smoke that wafted through the stalls. “What the hell?” Flannagan’s features pulled tight, his mouth twisting down at the corners as he shot a look at the box where the big horse was usually housed. “Omen wasn’t hurt?”

  “Just a scratch. Cut himself escaping. We found him outside the gate.” Eyeing Flannagan cautiously, Trent motioned to the opening of Omen’s stall with the beam of his flashlight. “It was hanging wide open.”

  Jules remembered Lynch’s notes in Flannagan’s file. Affinity for weaponry. Military background. Not hired by several law enforcement agencies. Flannagan, with his military buzz cut and honed wrestler’s physique, worked with the animals every day. Here. The stable was his milieu. All three kids who had died, had been attacked in his domain. He could have murdered Maeve earlier and returned in an attempt to throw suspicion away from him.

  Jules’s skin crawled. She didn’t trust this man, plain and simple. Was he a cold-blooded killer?

  Flannagan glanced again at the dead girl and a muscle worked in his jaw. “I suppose we’d better get hold of Lynch.”

  “Get him,” Trent suggested, “and while you’re at it, round up Deputy Meeker, send him out here. We’ll need to cordon off the stable until the detectives and crime investigators get here.”

  “So we’re just going to leave her?” Flannagan was incredulous as he lifted his lantern higher, spreading more light over the area, illuminating Maeve’s gray corpse. Ghostly shapes disappeared, transforming into feedbags and dangling bridles; lumpy, distorted images became saddles stretched across sawhorses.

  “For now we leave her as we found her. Until the crime investigators have a look. We’ll have to keep everyone out of the stable to preserve the integrity of the scene.”

  Flannagan frowned down at the body and sighed through his nose. “You don’t think she just slit her wrists?”

  “After setting a fire in Omen’s stall and setting him free, then dousing the place with retardant?” Trent asked. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Flannagan looked over at Jules. Silvery eyebrows formed one suspicious line. “So what were the two of you doin’ in here?”

  “Checking on the stock after the power went out,” Trent replied without missing a beat.

  “Yeah?” Flannagan wasn’t buying it.

  Trent didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll find the battery-powered heater and set it up, keep the place from freezing. But the temperature’s already dropping in here. Let’s get winter blankets on these horses.” While Flannagan was still eyeing Jules, Trent opened a cupboard and began hauling out blankets. Jules was right beside him. Flannagan, too, went to work, snapping blankets on each of the animals in their stalls.

  “Let me get this straight. You two were together when the fire broke out, is that what went down?” Flannagan asked as he stepped out of Scout’s stall, his harsh gaze riveted to Jules, as if he wanted her to feel that she might be wearing some kind of scarlet letter.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “In the middle of the frickin’ night?”

  “Yes.” She wasn’t backing down an inch. Let Flannagan think what he damned well wanted.

  Trent nodded as he latched the gate to Arizona’s box, then scratched the mare’s nose as she shoved it over the top rail. “We were working on a project for my pod when the power went out.”

  “Were ya, now?” Flannagan’s smile was a humorless white slash in the semidarkness, his sneer audible as he repeated, “A project?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “After lights-out?” Flannagan said. “I’ll remember that one.”

  “Do. In the meantime, just find Lynch and Meeker. You got walkie-talkies, Flannagan?” Trent double-checked the latch on Nova’s stall.

  Flannagan nodded. “Back at my place.”

  “Bring them,” Trent instructed. “We need to be in contact. I’ve got a set that I’ll pick up later.”

  Flannagan pointed out, “The security patrols are already using them.” He glanced around the stable. “What the hell happened to the backup generator?”

  “Don’t know. Bring that up with Lynch as well. And leave the lantern. You can have this.” Trent tossed Flannagan his flashlight, and the rumored ex-mercenary snagged it easily out of the air. “Let’s move.”

  “You got it.” Flannagan left the lantern with its harsh light washing the area in white light on the floor near one of the stalls.

  Jules watched him leave, his rifle still slung over his back, as quickly as he’d strode in. She didn’t trust him one little bit. After all, he was rumored to be a mercenary, a soldier who sold his loyalty to the highest bidder. Could he have done the same here? Was it possible that he was one of Lynch’s henchmen, hired to fulfill the reverend’s fanatical need to kill?

  But why would Lynch want to kill off another student? That didn’t make any sense!

  Didn’t Lynch have the ultimate say as to who was enrolled? If he made a mistake, taking in the wrong kid, why not just expel the student on a trumped-up charge? Why sink to murder?

  For the thrill?

  To make a point?

  To make certain the victim never talked?

  Quivering inside, Jules looked at the dead girl again. Propped up against the wall, her wrists slit, her hair burned, scrapes on her body, Maeve, like the horses, had been terrorized. Threatened. Burned. Someone was sick enough to have gotten off on her fear.

  “What happened to you?” Jules whispered, then, hearing Trent’s boots, snapped out of her reverie and helped him drag two huge battery-powered heaters from storage. They placed the heat sources about twenty feet apart in the aisle, then switched them on to bathe the center aisle of the stable in a weird, unworldly glow.

  “That should do it for now,” Trent said, looking around one last time.

  Jules couldn’t take her eyes off the dead girl. “You know, I think Maeve was here to meet Ethan Slade,” she confided, then explained about the note she’d witnessed spilling from Maeve’s bag and how distraught the girl had been earlier: “… she was really upset, nearly incoherent and crying her eyes out.” Guilt tore through Jules at the memory. “I should have insisted she see a counselor. If I had, she might be alive now.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it; this isn’t your fault.”

  “But I should have stepped in,” Jules said. “I had a feeling that something was wrong.”

  “We all knew she had a thing for Slade, that she was obsessed. She’d been counseled by Dr. Williams and Lynch, too, I think.” He touched Jules on the shoulder gently, his gaze holding hers. “We don’t have time for this—no blame game, okay?”

  “But—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, but we have to work past it. For Maeve. To find out what happened to her. So, now, tell me, do you think Ethan’s a suspect?”

  “I think everyone is,” she said, trying to push aside the guilt that clung to her. She remembered the comments in Lynch’s files, all scribbled in his strong hand. “And that includes Dr. Tobias Lynch himself. No, check that. I think he’s at the top of the list. After all he’s the one who made all the notes, seemed to realize that some of the people he was hiring had their own sets of mental or emotional problems.” She glanced toward the doorway where Flannagan had disappeared. “Take our buddy Bert Flannagan, for example. Turned down by a couple of police departments, but fine with Lynch. Good enough for Blue Rock. Flannagan had been in the mili
tary, was good around weapons, flew planes, saw combat, even maybe was a mercenary, all according to Lynch’s notes. Doesn’t sound like the best influence around troubled kids, now, does it? Only if the institution is really into discipline and warfare and the like.

  “So why would the reverend, the director of the school, hire people he knew weren’t completely sound, huh?” She asked. “Why not hire those applicants who are one hundred percent above board, those without even a hint of a problem? Lynch needed teachers and counselors, a whole staff of educators to deal with seriously troubled kids. And Lynch knew how deep these kids’ issues are. So it really doesn’t make sense, right? If you ask me, it’s a lot like bringing together high octane gasoline and a lit match.”

  Trent scowled as his eyes glanced around the interior of the stable one last time. “I read Lynch a little differently,” Trent said. “I think he’s a man of conviction. Believes he’s doing the right thing, following God’s course. I don’t think it’s an act.”

  “Maybe not. But there are graveyards filled with dead soldiers, all who died in the name of religion. Leaders from the dawn of time have twisted their faith into their own personal vendettas.” She eyed Maeve’s corpse again and shuddered. This was no place for a discussion on theology or religion. “Look, I have to get out of here,” she said. “I need to talk to Nell Cousineau, for one. I’m almost certain she sent me that note asking for help. She knows something. And then there’s Ethan Slade. I’d like to hear what the hell he knows!” Her mind was spinning ahead. “Also, I need to talk to my cousin Analise and her husband, Eli. He was a TA here. He might have heard something when he was enrolled at Blue Rock and—”

  “Jules!” Trent cut her off, then softened his voice and hugged her. “Slow down, would you? This is police business. It’s dangerous!”

  “That’s not exactly a news flash!”

  “Yeah, but, listen,” he said, “I don’t want you hurt. I’ll take you back to Stanton House. You go back to your suite and lock the doors. I’ll—”

  “What? Are you crazy? After finding Maeve?” she asked incredulously. What was he thinking? “No way can I just sit still and wait around.”