Ultimate Fear (Book 2 Ultimate CORE) (CORE Series)

by Kristine Mason

  She’d never held his past over his head and he’d never gone back on a promise. Hell, she’d never spoken to him in a condescending tone before, either.

  He reminded himself of where they were at and what they’d just lost, and put her feelings and needs above his. “Never,” he said, taking her hand in his. “You know I’d do anything for you. And if you want to name the next baby Elton, that’s fine by me.”

  Her eyes softened. “You’re a good husband. And you’re gonna make a great daddy.” With a wistful sigh, she looked to the picture again. “Ain’t that right, Elton. Your daddy is gonna make sure we’re together again real soon. And we’re gonna be a real family.” As she traced the tip of her finger along the photograph, she began humming a lullaby that should have sounded sweet, but for some reason it gave him an eerie chill.

  Dimples wasn’t herself right now, was all. She’d be fine. Once she had herself a baby boy to love, she’d be fine.

  He hoped.

  THE FIRST TRIMESTER

  For every evil under the sun,

  There is a remedy, or there is none.

  If there be one, try and find it;

  If there be none, never mind it.

  —Mother Goose

  Chapter 1

  Present day…

  “I HAVE NO words,” the young, uniformed patrol officer said, his face ashen, his eyes filled with disgust.

  Detective Jessica Donavan looked over the man’s shoulder toward where a large headstone stood at the top of a gently sloping hill. “You were the first on the scene, try and find them.” She glanced to his badge. “Officer Kronowski.”

  “Right. I…ah.” Kronowski cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his brow. “There’re two victims. Male and female. Looks like they’ve been there overnight.”

  Well, wasn’t that great. Between the heat and humidity plaguing Chicago, she could only imagine what they were going to find at the top of that hill. Too bad it was Thursday and not Saturday. Someone else could have taken this case, and she could be in her air-conditioned apartment, maybe even still in bed.

  “And?” her partner, Alex Byrnes, asked and looked up toward the cawing crows circling in the sky.

  “Call came in from one of the cemetery’s groundskeepers at six forty-five this morning. My partner and I got here a few minutes later, and after we found the victims I called dispatch. There’s a gun next to the male victim. I’m no forensics guy, but it looks like maybe a murder-suicide.”

  “Got any IDs?” Jessica asked, following the circling crows as well and counting four of them.

  Kronowski’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “No. But we’re assuming they’re the kid’s parents.”

  She dropped her gaze from the crows to the headstone below them. “Kid?”

  “Yeah, the grave is Noah Palmer’s. The marker says he was almost seven when he died.”

  Alex glanced at her. With his mirrored, aviator Ray-Ban sunglasses, she couldn’t see his eyes, but his clenched jaw indicated his disgust. Alex was married to her cousin, Shannon. They had three sons and their youngest was going to be eight at the end of the next month. Whenever she and Alex had to work a case involving kids, he had a hard time separating the job from his boys at home. Unfortunately, she could relate. Although at least this time around, thankfully, the kid wasn’t one of the victims.

  Car doors slammed behind them. Alex looked over her head. “Megan and Audra are here. Let’s head up the hill and start processing the scene.”

  Jessica loved working with the two Forensics Investigators. The women were sisters and although she could do without some of their—at times—caustic banter, they were meticulous and quick. Today was expected to hit close to ninety degrees. She had no desire to be at the cemetery staring at roasting dead bodies any longer than necessary.

  Kronowski stepped in front of them. “Do you need me? My partner is up there, so he can answer your questions, too.”

  Rookie. Then again, she couldn’t blame Kronowski. She’d been working for the Chicago PD for twelve years and had been a homicide detective for the past five. No matter how much she tried to harden herself, seeing the end results of violent crimes was never easy. She looked to her left and caught sight of a man leaning against a weed whacker beneath a large tree. “Is he the groundskeeper who reported the bodies?”

  Kronowski nodded. “Yeah. I told him to hang around until you guys got here.”

  As she moved past the patrol officer, she gave his shoulder a pat. “Good. Why don’t you go stand in the shade with him and make sure he stays put for us?” she suggested, giving Kronowski a break, and followed Alex up the hill.

  The thick green grass and the smatterings of mature trees and stone benches made Holy Cross appear more like a park than a cemetery. Arrays of beautiful vibrant flowers, large memorial bouquets and wreaths adorning the numerous graves indicated this place wasn’t for family picnics and Frisbee matches, though, but for resting in peace.

  As for murder?

  The crows continued to circle and caw and she counted six now. Leaves from the nearby trees rustled with the hot light breeze that brought with it the rancid odor of death. She slowed her pace when the bodies came into view and covered her nose and mouth with her forearm. Alex stood at least twenty feet from the gravesite. The other patrol officer was on the opposite side and approached them using a handkerchief to combat the smell.

  After the patrol officer introduced himself and relayed the same information as his partner, he said, “I gotta take a break from this shit.” He looked over his shoulder toward the crime scene. “Unless you need me to stick around.”

  “You’re good,” Alex said, as Megan and Audra made their way up the hill wearing white protective suits.

  “Morning,” Audra greeted them, and winced when the breeze gave them another acrid dose of decomposition. “What do we have?”

  “We’re about to find out,” Jessica responded, and nodded to Megan’s equipment box. “Got any extra masks in there, or are you going to make me have to walk back to my car?”

  “And miss out on the fun?” Megan pulled a couple of masks from the box, along with two pairs of booties to cover their shoes, and handed them to her and Alex. “Where’s the tape?”

  For whatever reason, Megan loved her crime scene tape. “Let’s figure out the perimeter first and then I’ll have the patrol officers take care of it,” Jessica said, then turned to Alex. “Ready?”

  With a nod, he placed the mask over his nose and mouth. After Jess did the same, they walked closer to the grave. With each step, with each cry from the orbiting crows, her stomach soured with dread, and she regretted that last cup of coffee. The mask helped with the smell, but not as much as she would have liked, and the view…

  Stopping only a few feet from the grave, she touched Alex’s arm. “I think Kronowski’s right.”

  “Murder-suicide? Yeah, looks like it.”

  Careful of where she stepped, she edged around the grave, halting a few feet from the headstone, which was a sculpted weeping angel holding a heart-shaped granite slab. She craned her neck and caught a glimpse of a child’s smiling face etched into the granite. Glancing to the base of the angel, she cringed and fought the bile rising at the back of her throat.

  “Assuming the victims are the parents, it looks like the husband shot the wife first,” Alex said from the opposite side of the angel.

  “She was on her knees.” Jessica squatted down. “Her rear is still resting on her heels. First guess, the husband came up from behind her and shot her in the head. Blood spatter and bits of her brain are near the angel’s knee and at the point of the heart slab.”

  “The gun is still in the husband’s hand,” Alex said, also crouching.

  From her angle she couldn’t see the gun, but based on the entry wound on the man’s head, which rested on its side against the woman’s back, it was clearly a suicide. What a waste. She’d never understood the whole murder-suicide thing. If someone wa
nted to take their life, have at it. But to take another person’s in the process?

  Disgusted, she stood and looked to the heart-shaped slab again. The boy had been adorable in life. Cute smile, laughing eyes and had died— “Oh, my God.” She glanced down at the dead couple. “The boy died a month ago.”

  Alex met her gaze. “The husband didn’t even give her a chance to properly grieve.”

  “He didn’t give himself the chance,” she countered, not with sympathy, but with frustration. She didn’t believe time healed all wounds. Hers were still raw and painful, but she knew first hand that life could go on after death. Just not the life she’d foolishly envisioned. Not the happy home, the warmth of her husband’s embrace or the joy and enchantment of her baby’s endearing smile.

  “Looks like there’s a silencer on the gun,” Alex said.

  Jessica shook off the melancholy and, with it, the image of her daughter’s dimpled smile, and moved behind the headstone to join her partner on the opposite side of the grave. “Unless he’s a cop, I’d say this was definitely premeditative.” In the state of Illinois, it was illegal for civilians to own silencers. “Not that it matters at this point.”

  Megan moved next to them. “Yeah,” she began, “he’s already given himself the death sentence. On the bright side, he saved Chicagoans tax dollars. No trial, no long prison sentence.”

  “Really, Meg?” Audra held up her camera and began taking pictures. “Just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to say it. These people were obviously grieving for their dead child.”

  Megan rolled her eyes, then knelt and rummaged through her toolkit. “I don’t remember ‘killing your wife’ as being a stage of grief.” She slipped on her protective eyewear. “I mean, I get it. Losing a child has to be the worst thing ever, but there are better ways to deal with—”

  Audra cleared her throat. “Change the subject,” she said, and sent Jessica an apologetic look.

  Megan glanced over at Jessica, before she hung her head. “Sorry, Jess. I…didn’t mean…” She let out an audible breath and went back to her toolkit.

  “Let it go,” Jessica said, looking to the crows above them. There were eight now. “I’m going to head down the hill to talk with the groundskeeper and get the officers to tape off the area.”

  “Jess.” Megan stood. “I really am sorry.”

  She started to back away. “Seriously. Let it go. It was a long time ago.” Six years, two months and four days. She held no contempt toward Megan for her faux pas, but she could have done without the reminder of her own loss. Not that it was ever far from her thoughts. Nor was the pain. The agony. Physically, she was fine. At least that’s what her doctor had told her, but had added that depression could cause the constant dull ache in her neck, back, legs and chest. Her doctor didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. She wasn’t depressed. Donavans didn’t do depression, but they did do anger. For a long time now, she’d certainly had plenty of rage bottled inside her.

  Six years, two months and four days.

  Rather than become caught up by that rage and the excruciating sorrow that sometimes came with it, she quickly pushed her mind to that place where nothing existed but the job. She reminded herself why she was here, brought to mind the dead woman who hadn’t deserved to have her brain penetrated by a bullet and splattered on her dead son’s grave. She thought about the woman’s family, and redirected her anger toward the husband. That family had already lost the little boy. Why, she didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was now there would be more suffering. By taking his own life, the dead man had stripped his wife’s family of any chance for justice. And that pissed her off.

  By the time she’d covered the short distance from the grave to the shady tree the groundskeeper and patrol officers stood beneath, the loose cotton shirt she’d purposefully worn today with the hope of combating the heat clung to her back. She’d also managed to refocus her anger to where it needed to be—on the investigation.

  As she questioned the groundskeeper, who assured her he hadn’t seen or heard anything when he’d left the cemetery yesterday evening around six, the patrol officers cordoned off the crime scene. The groundskeeper had mentioned noticing the couple, mostly the husband, visiting their son’s grave on a daily basis. Whether alone or together, they’d never driven a car through the cemetery and the groundskeeper had assumed they’d taken a bus or taxi. Since the cemetery closed its gates to the public at dusk, without a car lining the small road at the base of the hill, it made sense why the couple would have gone unnoticed by Holy Cross’s security guards. Add on the silencer used, along with the heavy traffic from the nearby intersection, and she could imagine how the murder-suicide took place.

  After dismissing the groundskeeper, she glanced back toward the grave. Ten crows flew high above the weeping angel and she was struck by the memory of an old poem about crows that her grandma used to recite when her grandpa had complained about the black birds menacing their small Illinois farm.

  One for sorrow,

  Two for mirth;

  Three for a wedding,

  Four for birth;

  Five for silver,

  Six for gold;

  Seven for a secret,

  Not to be told;

  Eight for heaven,

  Nine for hell,

  And ten for the devil’s own sell!

  She’d been about eight or nine when she’d first heard the poem. She hadn’t understood the point of it, or the term ‘devil’s own sell’. Her grandma had explained that it was a very difficult thing. After her ex, Dante, had heard her grandma recite the poem, he’d taken the term and had given it his own pragmatic, yet philosophical twist. He’d suggested ‘devil’s own sell’ referred to a burden that needed to be completed. If not, there would be no pleasure in life.

  Whatever. How that man had gone from badass Navy SEAL to a Gandhi wannabe, she didn’t know. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She should send Gandhi a text and remind him to water their vegetable garden. No, his vegetable garden, she amended. Still. The garden might not belong to her anymore, but it was a symbol of the past, of the summers she’d spent on her grandparents’ farm. Of Dante and the beautiful memories they’d created while making their yard and home a happy place filled with hopes and dreams.

  Before she drifted down the muddy road of sappiness, she pulled her phone from her pocket. As she was about to text Dante, Alex called for her. She looked up and caught him heading down the hill.

  Pocketing the phone, she met up with him. “Sorry I abandoned you up there,” she said. “How much longer will Meg and Audra take?”

  He steered her toward the unmarked Ford Inceptor. “They’ve got at least another hour before they’ll be finished.”

  “Did they find anything that disputes the murder-suicide idea?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. They did start moving the bodies and we’ve got a positive ID on both victims. Meg found drivers’ licenses for Richard and Leslie Palmer. So now we get to tell their family.”

  Joy. She let out a sigh. Informing victims’ families that their loved ones were deceased was her least favorite part of the job. She hated being the bearer of bad news, but it was an unfortunate necessity.

  As they reached their sedan, the Coroner’s van slowed around the curve of the hill. “Let’s get out of here,” Alex said. “I’ve already called in for a warrant for the Palmers’ house. An officer is going to meet us there. After that, we’ll find next of kin and go from there.”

  In other words, they’d go straight back to their precinct to do a crap-ton of paperwork. “Just get me inside someplace air conditioned,” she said, and headed for the passenger side of the sedan. Before she climbed in, she looked to the top of the hill again.

  One by one, as if their job had been done, the crows began to quietly veer off in different directions. All but one. The tenth black bird circled several more times, then flew toward their sedan and hovered
there, flapping its wings and staring down.

  “What are you looking at?” Alex asked over the hood of the car, before following her gaze.

  An eerie chill prickled her skin. “The devil’s own sell,” she said, quickly slipping inside the car.

  Alex climbed in, too, then slid the key into the ignition. “The what?”

  She shrugged and pulled out her cell phone. “Nothing. It’s a long story.”

  “We have a forty minute drive to the Palmers’ house. I’ve got time,” he said, and drove out of the cemetery.

  She finished sending Dante a text, reminding him to water the vegetable garden, then dropped her cell phone in her lap. “My grandma had a weird thing for crows,” she began, then told him about how her grandpa would complain about the crows, and then the poem her grandma would recite. “I don’t know. Maybe the tenth crow represents our burden. You know, having to go through the dead husband and wife’s house, then tell the family that they’d not only buried a little boy a month ago, but they’ll have to bury the parents now, too.”

  “Are you back with Dante?” he asked, turning down South Michigan and heading toward Prairie Parkway.

  She quickly looked at him. “No,” she said with more vehemence than she’d meant. “I mean, we talk. You know that.” She’d been partners with Alex for five years, but since he’d married her cousin, Shannon, she’d known him for nearly fifteen. He, of all people, would know if she was back with Dante. Which she wasn’t and, based on how their marriage had ended, she doubted she ever would. Some things could never be mended, no matter how much she’d like them to be.

  “Sorry, but when you start spouting off about stuff like crows representing burdens, you sound like him. Not that it’s a bad thing.” He glanced at her and sent her a half grin. “I’m talking about you and Dante getting back together. That deep shit about the crows I could do without.”