Skye stirred beside him and grumbled, “It’s only seven-forty.”
Josh wasn’t quite coherent when he fumbled the pickup and snapped, “Hello.”
“How soon can you and Skye get to Ballard?”
Josh blinked at Harry Drummond’s all business-like voice. He sucked in a breath, ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Give me the address.”
In his ear, he heard Harry rattle off a location he already knew was in Ballard. It didn’t surprise him when Harry added the warning, “And if I were you, I wouldn’t eat breakfast first.”
Josh had known it wasn’t all a dream. But hearing Harry’s warning had him turning to Skye. “Harry has a double murder. Two women this time, same house.”
More awake now, she pushed her hair from her face. “You tossed and turned all night, Josh. Does that have anything to do with the fact we’re crawling out of bed to go to another crime scene?”
“I’ll tell you about it in the car. Let’s not waste time. With rush-hour traffic, we need to move.”
By the time Josh and Skye reached Ballard it was almost nine o’clock. They had no trouble picking out the right house because cop cars lined the curbs. And Harry waited for them at the curb alongside a string of yellow crime scene tape.
“I’m telling you right now, both of you are going to want to prepare yourself for what’s inside that house. In all my years in homicide this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. This time, there are two victims.”
Skye and Josh traded glances. On the ride over, Josh had already given her a vivid replay of the night before.
“What he did to Tracy Lewis—” Harry stopped talking, tried to regain his composure. He glanced up at Josh and for the first time noticed the sickened look on the other man’s face. “If you’re that green now, you won’t last five minutes in there,” Harry admonished.
Skye took hold of Harry’s arm. “I think it’s a little too late for that.”
Harry didn’t ask what she meant. Instead he studied Josh’s face again, this time longer, buying all three of them some time. But to Skye, it seemed as if Harry had already decided there was something else going on here which was a good thing.
“Why do I get this feeling that Josh here has already somehow seen the carnage firsthand?” Harry asked.
But Skye simply shook her head.
“Well, let’s give this a try then. Follow me.” Harry grabbed two pairs of latex gloves from a crime scene investigator and handed them off. “Just because you have those on, doesn’t mean you can touch anything. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
Josh removed his sunglasses before turning to Skye. “Will you be okay in here?”
“Don’t worry about me. I did this before, remember?”
Josh had done his best to prepare her on the drive here for what she’d likely see. But stepping into the house, his sense of readiness plunged. He wasn’t sure he could follow through. He already knew what was down that hallway and wished like hell that Skye did not have to witness it.
As they moved through the doorway, the unmistakable smell of death hung in the fetid air.
While Harry directed them to the first bedroom where Julie’s body lay on the bed, Skye trailed behind. But Josh hung back even farther. Finally she walked into the room behind Harry. This time, the killer had not left an orderly murder scene behind.
Julie Freeman’s space had been violated much like her body had. Bruises were already starting to form along the throat and around her breasts just as it had with Sylvia Waterston.
But the battering and wounds were far worse this time around, Skye decided. The rage more pronounced. “Who found the bodies?” Skye wanted to know.
“Tracy’s boyfriend, a man by the name of Kyle Mattingly. Tracy spent the early part of last night with him and left her cell phone behind at his apartment. On his way into work this morning, he swung by here to drop it off. He found the front door unlocked, walked inside…to this. If it hadn’t been for him wanting to return the phone, we probably wouldn’t have known about this until Saturday. That’s when the other roommate was due back from out of town. She’s a flight attendant.”
“Good thing she was gone. Otherwise this could’ve been a three-for-three deal,” Skye suggested, as she took in the bloody mass on the bed that passed for Julie Freeman. “So unlike the Waterston crime scene,” Skye muttered. “Julie must’ve really pissed him off.”
Harry cleared his throat. “You think this is bad? Tracy is worse and there isn’t much left of the face that’s recognizable.”
Skye shook her head, met Harry’s eyes, and then turned to Josh who hadn’t said a word at this point. “You okay?” she asked.
Josh shook his head. “I might need a minute before going on.”
Skye patted his shoulder. “Take all the time you need.” Just one of the things she loved about the guy. Even with everything that had happened, even with all the changes his body and mind had gone through since last spring, since the transformation into part wolf, the man still had a tender heart. The same as he’d had the night she’d saved his ass in an alleyway. It truly amazed her that Josh Ander could have gone through so much in so short amount of time and managed to keep his own sense of being, even a sense of humor.
But not today.
She left Josh standing in the hallway while she followed Harry into the other bedroom, the other crime scene. Skye wasn’t prepared for the amount of blood or the violence here.
If Julie’s bedroom had been in disarray, Tracy Lewis’s bedroom had been trashed. The killer had taken a knife and shredded the bedding along with every stitch of clothing in Tracy’s closet only to leave the tattered remains all over the room.
“Your impressions?” Harry asked Skye.
About that time, Josh appeared in the doorway. But he stood where he was without actually setting foot inside the room. With a heightened sense of smell, courtesy of Kiya, Josh used that to replay what had taken place here only hours earlier. In his mind’s eye, he retraced the steps of the killer, watching the crime play out in progress. When he tried to speak, he found his voice a little scratchy. But he did his best to concentrate and get through this.
“He goes into Julie’s bedroom first. Julie’s willing to oblige him, do whatever he says, whatever he wants. Julie wants to live more than anything and believes she will. That is, until he leaves her and goes into Tracy’s room where it goes badly from the start—because Tracy fights back. Julie overhears what’s happening. All the while he’s in the other bedroom, Julie hears Tracy struggle, hears everything he does to her, the grunts, the sounds of a scuffle. It gets bad. And when the killer takes out his gun...” Josh swallowed hard and turned to look at Skye before he added, “He hits Tracy, over and over again, bashing her head in. After he has her subdued, he rapes Tracy. After the sexual assault, he places the gun between Tracy’s legs and pulls the trigger.”
As if from the end of a tunnel, Josh heard Skye let out a gasp.
But it was Harry who had questions. “How do you know that?” Even as the words flew out of Harry’s mouth though, just as quickly, he held up a hand. “On second thought, I promised Skye. I don’t care because it’s right on the money. We think that’s exactly what the killer did.”
“I’m not sure what good it will do knowing this but—”
“Don’t hold anything back. I want to hear everything you think you know. That’s why you’re standing in the middle of a crime scene,” Harry said with some emphasis.
“Okay. The killer undresses, takes off his clothes as soon as he gets inside the house before he ever goes down the hall after either victim. He has surprise on his side. And he’s confident, swaggering even, doesn’t appear outwardly nervous. Neither woman heard him enter. He subdued Julie first, tied her wrists and ankles before going next door to Tracy’s bedroom where he tried to do the exact same thing.”
“But Tracy struggled, fought back,” Skye repeated. “She was no match for a man though. What was she?�
� Skye glanced at what was left of Tracy’s body on the bed as she tried to gauge the woman’s height in life. “Maybe five-three?”
Harry nodded. “According to her driver’s license, that’s about right.”
“Go on, Josh,” Skye urged, knowing he needed to get it all out. “Tell us everything you see.”
“When Tracy started swinging, it pissed him off. He beat her face to a pulp, broke her nose, raped her, stabbed her, shot her. I think what he did to Tracy your FBI experts would call overkill.”
“Julie must’ve heard the shot,” Skye added.
Josh shook his head as if coming back to himself. “No. The gun had a silencer. By the time the killer got back to Julie though, the woman was terrified. She’d had at least thirty minutes to consider her fate. She knew she was going to die. During that time another hour probably went by. He played with Julie. He taunted her. He took his time like you said he did with the Waterston woman. But then, he had to take his time before he raped Julie. He waited around at least an hour, maybe a couple before he was able to perform again. He caused both women a great deal of pain before they died. Both women suffered…terribly.”
A little stunned at the details, Skye finally asked, “Josh, you see all that?”
“Yeah,” was all Josh could say.
But Skye prodded, even with Harry standing there curiously watching them both. “You see the fine points enough to make out the scene in your head. Wait. You said something in your sleep last night. Something about the bones will talk to you. No, wait, that isn’t right. The bones will tell. That’s what you kept saying, over and over again.”
“The bones will tell, Skye. That phrase keeps bouncing around in my head. I don’t know what it means. Yet. The bones will always tell,” Josh repeated.
Skye furrowed her brow, doing her best to follow his line of thinking. “Okay. So exactly what are they telling you right now? You see what he did here. They’re telling you that much now. So give us all of it.”
“The man’s orderly, a bit of an obsessive-compulsive guy. He does the same thing again and again at every crime scene unless he gets distracted or overly pissed off like he did here. Then he loses it. If he gets out of his rhythm, he gets frustrated, easily sidetracked. He loses patience.” Josh snapped his fingers. “Just like that, he’ll go ballistic.”
“And spends a lot of time with his victims,” Harry tossed in. “Skye was right about that. The coroner surmised that he brought the Waterston woman into the bathtub. Probably slit her throat there before taking the time to carry her back in the bedroom where he posed her on the floor.”
“How do you know that?” Skye asked.
“The crime scene techs found a substantial amount of blood in the drain.”
Skye paced so she could think. “So he isn’t here just for the rape, even if the woman cooperates, he’s here to kill his victims no matter what she says or does. He doesn’t plan on leaving a woman alive. The degree of violence changes from scene to scene depending on how pissed off he gets at the victim during the time he’s here. Have I got that right?”
“That’s it exactly,” Josh said in agreement. “By targeting vulnerable women, comfortable in their homes, by controlling them on every level that’s everything to him, he sees it as a coup because the control makes him feel superior.”
“Ah,” Skye said. “So he likely won’t move on to prostitutes or drug addicts?”
“No. Those women he considers beneath him, considers them the dregs of society and too easy to grab. They offer no challenge. And I’ve been thinking about this. It also might mean…it’s just a hunch really…”
“You might as well say it,” Harry grumbled. “I’ve known cops who solved cases with less.”
“Okay, I think he’s probably from a good family, maybe people considered to be pillars of the community, wherever that turns out to be. He’s patient. He doesn’t mind waiting for these women living with partners to leave them alone so he can seize his opportunity.”
“Like Sylvia Waterston.”
“It’s a challenge for him to come into these houses, having the freedom to move around whenever he wants while they’re away. He’d been here before the attack. It’s likely what he does. He’s proud of his scouting abilities.”
“Could he be military?” Skye questioned.
“Military?” Josh considered that. “No, I don’t think so. Just my gut feeling. But it doesn’t really matter to him if his target has a roommate or is in a relationship. Obviously. He waits for that perfect opportunity. Then does what he does.”
“So maybe he’s striking out at this little piece of suburbia the only way he knows how, hitting them where they live, where they should be the safest. He isn’t snatching them off the streets. That’s for sure.”
“Wait a minute,” Harry said, interrupting their byplay. “How is it you see all that but can’t tell me who did this? What he looks like? That’s bullshit.”
“He wears a mask over his face,” Josh explained matter-of-factly.
Skye’s eyebrows went up. She exchanged a look with Harry. “You forgot to mention that, Josh.”
“Sorry, but there’s a lot hitting me here all at once, I’m a little overwhelmed. I can tell you how tall he is though. A little under six feet. I’d say about five-eleven in his bare feet. I can tell you he has stone-cold brown eyes. He’s physically fit, toned abs, muscular legs. He probably likes to think of himself as an athlete. But I’d say that lame description fits at least half the men within a fifty-mile radius of Seattle.”
“And then some,” Harry mumbled in disappointment.
“Sorry, Harry. I know you wanted more,” Josh admitted.
“Yeah, but you’re not a magician. You’ve given me more than I had when I got to Ballard this morning. That counts for something. I’m gonna do everything I can to get this sick bastard.”
“That’s good. Because Skye and I plan on doing the same,” Josh said in the way of a reminder.
Chapter Six
For Josh and Skye, downtime was almost nonexistent. But when they were able to relax, they excluded the world in order to spend time alone with each other. They turned off cell phones to watch a movie. They did the same with their laptops, making a pact to not check emails or go near social media. There were times like tonight when all they did was stretch out on the couch in the living room at the loft and talk.
With his head, resting on Skye’s lap, they tried to sort out the changes taking place in Josh. It had taken him a couple of days to get back to his old self again. During that time, Skye had done her best to walk him through how best to handle the images which were becoming a nightly ordeal.
“Why do these visions only come to me at night? Why don’t they hit me while I’m sitting at my desk in broad daylight staring out at the Space Needle? Why don’t they point me to the sick bastard?” Josh wondered, clearly frustrated.
“Hmm, how do I explain this to a smart, sci-fi geek like you so you’ll be able to grasp the big picture? Let’s see. First, the brain is most susceptible to a vision when you don’t have your shields up. That would occur at night when the subconscious is prone to suggestions during sleep, the dream-like state. Second, if he ever takes off that damned mask, you’ve got him in your sights.”
“Shields up? I like that. My sci-fi influence is obviously rubbing off on you, admit it?”
“What I admit is that all your tossing and turning is keeping me awake at night,” she teased.
“Sorry. But I don’t see how you handled this at thirteen, Skye. Some of these images are disturbing and I’m a grown man. For a child…I can only imagine. I just don’t see how you kept from going crazy.”
“I’m the reason you’re having these dreams, Josh.”
Josh let out a loud sigh. “Come on. Not this again. We’ve rehashed this no less than a hundred times. I am what I am now. Do you hear me complaining? No. Want to know why? Because I’m happier than I’ve ever been before in my life.” He picked up he
r hand. “That’s because of you. You seem to forget that if you hadn’t come along in the alley to save me that night, I might not even be here. If we hadn’t crossed paths I might be dead right now long before Kiya ever brought me back from the other side.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to make it sound like it was meant to be or something.”
“Why? I believe you and I were meant to be. I’m sorry you don’t.” Bitterness clawed its way into his reason, began to inch up to full anger.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
All at once he sat upright, looked over at her, long and hard. “You won’t even talk about our future together. It clearly makes you uncomfortable when I even broach the subject. You can’t even bring yourself to use the word ‘married’ where we’re concerned.”
“Josh, I can’t even have children.”
He continued staring at her with those silver eyes of his, until she finally added, “Don’t deny it. You wanted children. You said so—with Annabelle.”
“Okay, I did—once upon a time—with Annabelle. But Annabelle’s gone. I’m not fixated on having children, Skye.”
“That’s because you can have children,” she snapped in a huff. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Josh tried for patience, rubbed his forehead where a headache wanted to join the growing resentment. “And there’s not a thing wrong with you. You’re perfect in every way.” When he saw her scoff at that, he went another direction. “Did you ever get a second opinion about that diagnosis from another doctor? You had to be very young when they told you that.”
She shook her head.
“We could always adopt.”
“You’d do that?”
He sighed and took hold of her chin. “I’m pretty sure before we head to an adoption agency and sit down with social workers, you’d have to marry me first, which up to this point, I can’t even get you to agree to discuss. Do you love me, Skye?”
“Of course, I do.”
Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell Page 7
