Frank had to admit that bringing Denise around lately had helped him get along so much better with the old bat.
When he looked up and spotted Denise pedaling her bicycle along the dusty road, he became less annoyed with her. Even late, he was glad to see Denise and her long flowing reddish brown hair. He liked her freckles, her upturned nose, and the innocent way her green eyes always searched his for approval.
As Denise got closer, Frank waved in greeting. But he could tell by the look on her sweaty face that something was wrong.
“What took you so long?”
Winded, Denise almost tumbled off her bike. She rummaged through her knapsack and came up with the ring he’d given her two weeks ago. “I started not to come. But I thought you deserved to hear it from me before Tommy Platt told you.”
Frank’s forehead creased with troubled lines. He didn’t like Tommy Platt who sat behind him in biology class and always gave him a hard time about something. “Tell me what? What’s stupid Tommy got to tell me?” Then he saw his ring in her hand, the one he’d taken from old lady Harbison’s house. Denise was reaching out to give the jewelry back to him.
“We’re…I’ve…sorta…decided to go out with Tommy tomorrow night to the movies. He’s taking me to see Godzilla.”
“Why? I thought you liked me. I thought you wanted to spend time with me.”
“I did. I do. But your mother never lets you do anything fun. I want to go to the movies with my boyfriend. And you never can go without sneaking around,” Denise pointed out. “Just last week you got in trouble for it when we went to see that comedy, Krippendorf’s Tribe.”
“But you belong to the same church as me. You know it’s against their rules to watch that filth on the big screen.”
“My mom and dad have decided to go somewhere else though.”
“Leave? Go to another church, you mean?” His mother wasn’t going to like hearing that, Frank decided. She would never let him see Denise again anyway once she got wind of it. “Why? Your parents are making a huge mistake.”
“Because they’ve decided to start going to the one over on Eighth Street.”
“You mean the Methodist?”
“That’s the one.”
His mother didn’t like the Methodists. Frank shifted his feet. “So because I can’t go to the movies without having to sneak around you’re breaking up with me?”
“I’m breaking up with you because you have a temper. You’re always on the verge of exploding. Like right this minute, you’ve got this look in your eyes like you could strangle me or something.”
Frank took the stick he was holding and brought it down across her face. “You bitch!” he screamed.
Stunned at the sudden blow, Denise stumbled backward. She felt the sting along with the blood from the knick across her cheek. “What the heck is wrong with you anyway? Why did you hit me?” When she saw Frank take a few more steps toward her, getting closer, she started backing away from him.
Frank saw the fear in Denise’s eyes first. That fear fueled his rage. It excited him much more than her breasts ever had. He hit her again with the stick. When she tripped over a patch of burweed, he pounced and took her completely all the way down to the dirt. She struggled but finally Frank climbed on top of her. Before he could stop himself, he found his hands reaching, and then wrapping around Denise’s narrow neck. His fingers kept up the pressure, tightening and tightening until he watched as the life slowly went out of Denise’s fourteen-year-old eyes.
It wasn’t until after—when he sat next to Denise’s lifeless body that he came back to himself—and realized he’d ejaculated in his shorts.
How the hell did he plan to explain that to his mother? he wondered. And where was he going to hide Denise so no one would know what he’d done?
Chapter Nineteen
Fresh from his victorious bout in the octagon where he had annihilated his latest challenger senseless, Frank decided a celebration was in order. Tonight, he had some time on his hands. He intended to make the most of it. He would treat himself to a road trip, a different community entirely. Before the night was done it would yield a gorgeous blonde. That would make for a consummate week, the icing on the cake, so to speak.
Not for the first time, Frank had decided a change of scenery would spice things up, especially now that he’d left a survivor. Even though the news outlets hadn’t used her name, Frank knew that meant Janie Holliman had spoken to the cops.
He’d expected the bitch would talk. But he wasn’t worried. What could Janie tell them anyway? That a masked intruder with brown eyes tried to rape her? In Frank’s book that didn’t amount to very much.
But as long as things were getting a little too hot in the Seattle area to keep tempting fate, he’d decided to switch up his hunting grounds. Besides, new surroundings made for a better game.
Just because he’d driven forty minutes outside Seattle to get to the little city of Snohomish didn’t mean he’d changed his methods or his goals.
He hadn’t been to the area since last spring. Because of that he might have to refer to his extensive notes to find the house and the target he remembered. But that just meant he’d have to go on the hunt, which was almost his favorite part.
Once he reached the city limits, Frank remembered a town with a charming historic district that included a fair share of antique shops and the usual places that catered to tourists who wanted to buy souvenirs.
But what interested him the most was the fact it had several long and narrow jogging paths hidden among tall trees—along the river that led to the types of houses he preferred—and the single women who lived in them.
The detailed journals he kept would no doubt jog his memory once he applied himself to the task at hand. He checked his map, located the street he was looking for, and drove past the woman’s house several times just to be sure he had the right one. He had to recheck the address twice and then the name of the street again. Once he reread his notes, yet again, he knew for certain, he’d been inside this particular house.
When he spotted the pale blonde with her hair tied up in a ponytail running along the trail at a fast clip, he recognized her from what he termed his “spring break” last March. And just as he had remembered, she met the criteria perfectly.
She would probably fight back. And she would lose.
He parked the Ford pickup and got out, walked to the ridgeline above the neighborhood with a perfect viewpoint of all the winding paths. From there, Frank watched her. Familiar now, in stature and build, dressed in sweat pants and a matching top, the runner continued her brisk pace. He kept her in his sights during her entire run which lasted just over an hour.
Once he saw her check the time on her wrist and finally quit jogging, he stared at the way she walked, the sway of her hips, her long, lean legs—and decided she could definitely go at least one round with him.
He continued his vigilance while she caught her breath and drank from the bottle of water she’d pulled from the pouch she wore around her belly.
Excitement raced through him. In a matter of hours he would have what he wanted. As she moved, he began to follow her from the upper pathway, making sure not to let her out of his line of vision while she headed back to her house.
When the greenbelt met up with sidewalk, when she disappeared inside a trendy two-story at the end of the block, he snuck back into the alleyway. There, Frank perused the backyard and the best place to lie low until it was time to make his move.
He took out his phone to snap photos of the area. He removed his journal from his backpack, flipped pages to refer to his entries from last spring…again. The blonde’s name was Chanin Crowley, and she was twenty-five years old. She had a yappy little dog he’d have to deal with but he smiled because he realized it would be worth it. Chanin had a toned body and a fondness for plastic surgery. He remembered now that Chanin’s lips had been filled with injectable facial filler. According to the receipts he’d found on her desk, she’d also pa
id for liposuction on her hips and thighs. Her breasts had been augmented to a nice, round, luscious C-cup. She’d enhanced those the previous December, a little Christmas present to herself after a messy divorce.
Before midnight, Frank resolved to make it his mission to see for himself if the surgeon had done a decent enough job on both.
By the end of October, there had been two more women found brutally slain, bringing the man’s grand total, that they knew of anyway, up to double digits.
Single-mom Janie Holliman had been the only woman lucky enough to escape from the man’s clutches.
Their killer didn’t seem to be deterred by state-of-the-art security or new locks. He didn’t seem to care if his target had kids in the home, owned dogs, or lived outside the Seattle area. If he felt like the cops were getting close, if he felt their stakeouts might pay off, he simply moved on to another locale.
With each homicide, their killer’s rage ramped up.
For his last known victim, an attractive blonde, he’d travelled to Snohomish, where he’d slit the woman’s throat before cutting out her breast implants.
Josh had seen it all go down. Chanin Crowley’s vicious murder was only one reason his sleepless nights had come back twofold. After the most recent string of homicides, sharp, intense images punched their way into his psyche to stay with him long after he crawled out of bed. The violent outbursts brought him into the chamber of horrors to witness vicious brutality, the like of which he’d never known. Brutality that made him realize this particular madman had a screw loose. How could one human being do that to another? he wondered. When the grisly pictures became almost unbearable, when they wouldn’t let up, he had Skye there beside him to walk him through the depth of what he’d seen and the anxiety he felt afterward.
How in the world a thirteen-year-old had been able to handle such vivid savageness at such a young age without going nuts was a mystery to Josh. And just showed, yet again, what a strong person Skye Cree had been for more than a dozen years.
Since the dreams wreaked havoc on his nights, the disturbing nightmares in turn, affected his waking hours, putting a strain on his every day work schedule and ultimately his relationship with Skye.
He found he couldn’t go without sleep for long before it started catching up with him. Not only was he tired the next day, he found himself distracted during meetings. During the day-to-day stresses of managing his company, many times he caught himself trying to figure out the riddle of the bones will tell refrain when he should have been focused on the next upgrade or the upcoming software releases.
As a result, Josh became irritable with his staff. And it had to stop. If he and Skye didn’t find a way to catch this guy soon, insomnia proved, once again, it could and would kick his ass on a daily basis until this case had a resolution.
But if his nightly visitations from the mind of a killer weren’t enough, Josh had to deal with the constant knowledge he had to be missing something. At each crime scene, the same message rolled around in his brain and kept coming through loud and clear. The bones will tell.
And he didn’t have a clue what it meant.
The deaths he saw in his visions were disturbing, as were the crime scenes he got to visit firsthand. But there were no bones spread around to talk to him to tell him anything.
“Maybe you’re taking that phrase much too literally,” Skye proposed. “Think about it. Maybe these particular bones don’t have anything to do with this case at all. Maybe you’re getting your wires crossed.”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
“Sure. The images merge from one scene to another and they aren’t even related. Haven’t you ever been dreaming about a tropical island and right in the middle of the white sandy beach while sipping your pina colada you drift into some ugly chore you have to do at work the next day? It’s the same principle. The bones will tell might mean you need to go visit a forensic anthropologist, sit down to have a heart-to-heart or there might be bones sitting in a box somewhere you need to find or something of that nature. The point is, it could mean you need to keep an open mind, think outside the box. And you won’t know for sure what the phrase means exactly until later after you’ve exhausted all other avenues.”
“How much later? That sounds like wasting a lot of valuable time to me.”
She huffed out a breath. “That’s hard to gauge. It’s not one of those hard-and-fast things with a clear-cut indication you have to look deeper. We’ll figure it out though. If the phrase is tied to this case, it’ll eventually come to light.”
“In the meantime, I muddle through and wonder what I’m missing. It’s bugging me, Skye.”
“Then I guess it must be important, a gut instinct, or in this case a strong, recurring theme which should never be ignored.”
“It’s difficult to do that when I get the same words over and over again in my head at each crime scene. It’s significant, I know it is. Without getting graphic, as horrific as each murder is, let’s face it, these victims aren’t down to bones. In many instances, the women have only been dead for a couple of hours, like at Tracy’s and Julie’s house and Kathy Monroe’s. I don’t think the phrase means current victims.”
“Well, whatever it means, if our guy keeps up this pace, we’ll have to create an Excel spreadsheet,” Skye countered to keep up. She glanced over at Josh stretched out on the couch and caught his reaction, a flinch in his jaw muscle. “You’ve already done that, haven’t you?”
“Why not? It seemed the best way to be able to scan the doc and maybe pick up on a pattern.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Not at all. His changing neighborhoods all the time is a problem but if you pick up his pattern—”
“Could we predict where he might hit next?” Skye wondered.
“We could try. But it would be damned near impossible because he’s so erratic. We know he goes to great lengths to scout for victims, and then stalks them. But if we could ever narrow down his hunting ground, that would be huge.”
Skye moved to the map they’d tacked up to a bulletin board near Josh’s desk he used as his home office. There were photos of each victim along with the addresses of each crime scene. They’d added details of each murder so they could track where he’d hit. It was also a way to keep them all straight. She studied each note, tapped the paper. “The thing is he’s all over the place.”
“But it should be easier than this to pick up the pattern.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s so anal-retentive, obsessive-compulsive, whatever label you want to use to describe him. He feels compelled to go back again and again to the same neighborhood, burglarizing the houses, making sure the people know he’s been there. Harry says he’s never seen a guy do that before. But maybe we could use that particular trait to lure him into a trap.”
“I’m in.”
“I know you are. But we have to set the trap first and it has to be something he’s unable to resist. We have to control the environment and set up the scene to perfection. As sadistic as he is, he’s also smart. Because the bastard is too calm and collected as long as he’s in control. Shake his routine and it sets him off enough to take a baseball bat he found under the victim’s bed and bash her brains in.”
“Or cut out her breast implants. I get your point. But do you get the sense that he’s getting more unpredictable? Because that’s what I’m getting. Not from any outside influence like Kiya either, but his last four murders have been off the charts in appalling cruelty. How do we even begin to predict when he himself is so unpredictable?”
“It’s hard to imagine an unstable killer becoming more erratic. But yeah, he seems to have gone on a tear since he lost control and let Janie Holliman escape. He seems to have taken that personally.”
Skye nodded in agreement. “Like he has to prove a point or something.”
“Exactly.” But Josh had something he needed to say to her. “What point are you trying to prove, Skye?”
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She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t start on me, Josh. I’m not ready to deal with what Travis did yet.”
“And how much time will go by before you are? I know that’s the way you feel right now, this moment, but it’s a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things. What about down the road? Because something’s been bothering you other than the obvious. It goes well past the initial anger, it’s on a deeper level now, I can sense it. Something you haven’t been able to shake, and it’s the reason you’re unable to get a good night’s sleep. What’s going on with you, Skye?”
She looked away. “I’ve started to remember certain things from childhood, images really, like snapshots, mostly when I was much younger. They involve Travis and I don’t like what it’s doing to me up here.” She tapped the side of her head at the temple. “I’m recalling stuff that doesn’t fit. With everything else that’s been going on, I don’t want to think about all this right now. I’m not sure I can afford to.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. You’re already distracted. This thing with Travis, you need to take care of it so that you’re able to focus, to fully concentrate on what’s at hand. This serial killer isn’t a side dish and shouldn’t be treated as such. He’s the main course. You unfocused during this time is not a good thing.” When he realized what she’d said about her childhood, he asked, “What do you mean you remember things? You mean before your parents died?”
“Oh yeah. Quite a bit before. Years.”
“And it concerns Travis?”
Her head slowly moved up and down. “It does.”
Skye Cree 02: The Bones Will Tell Page 17
