by KJ Kalis
Sauk Valley Killer
KJ Kalis
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 K.J. Kalis
eISBN 978-1-7352192-1-9
ISBN 978-1-7352192-2-6
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved, no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise including technology to be yet released), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.
Contents
Also by K.J. Kalis:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
A Note from the Author…
Also by K.J. Kalis:
The Cure (Kat Beckman book 1)
Fourteen Days (Kat Beckman book 2)
Burned (Kat Beckman book 3)
The Blackout (Kat Beckman book 4)
The Bloody Canvas (Kat Beckman book 5)
Christian Non-Fiction (Karen Kalis)
Miserable Christians: Eliminate Discontent, Rediscover Your Joy and Live an Abundant Life
1
Joseph’s hands felt warm as he touched the cold skin of the dead body. If anyone had asked him, he would have had to admit he liked it. He hummed underneath his breath as he arranged her legs and arms underneath the tree. It was dark, and he hoped that no animals would nibble at his work before the body was found. It was a necessary risk.
The air was cool and dry this time of year, typical for California. The Santa Ana winds hadn’t yet started to blow, but Joseph knew it was just a matter of time. At least it wasn’t too hot, he thought, realizing that if he had laid the body out in the summer, it would’ve started to degrade much faster than he would’ve liked. It was important to him that the police could see the work he’d done.
He stepped back, staring. The young woman, Chelsea Atkinson, had only been with him for a few days. Her body was now propped up against the base of a black walnut tree, the branches sagging low under the weight of the nuts that were about to drop. He took a brief step forward to adjust her hair, tucking it behind her shoulder, tucking the edges of the wool blanket around her. Her eyes were closed, her skin ashen, her lips blue. There was no need to leave her uncovered out in the woods. That would be disgraceful. She had given her life nobly, if not with a good bit of crying. Joseph glanced down at her arms, one of them the same shade of the skin on her face, the other one purple and red and swollen from the reattachment.
Joseph stepped back and took another look at her, shaking his head slightly. That the reattachment surgery hadn’t worked the way he hoped wasn’t a tremendous surprise, but he would have liked to have had better results. Not that he expected the arm to take, after all it was from a young man, but he had hoped that there would have been some signs of life in the limb.
Joseph’s mind flashed back to the recipient of Chelsea’s arm, a young man named Daniel Arthur. He had come across the idea for his experiment rather suddenly. Joseph was at a local coffee shop and saw Daniel and Chelsea walk in, holding hands. His mind fixated on their connection. What would happen if he switched their arms? Was it even possible? He had read many articles in medical journals about how surgeons were able to put a severed limb back on the body, but no one was able to use a living donor. It was a scientific leap, he knew, but that was the hallmark of his work.
Satisfied with how Chelsea’s body looked, he walked away, lifting the handles of the wheelbarrow he had used to transport her body from the truck to the tree. To anyone glancing his direction, he looked like a gardener or someone involved in park maintenance. He liked it that way.
As he loaded the wheelbarrow into the bed of the truck, he started thinking about Daniel. Truthfully, he was surprised at the results. Joseph performed the reattachment surgeries simultaneously after bringing them into his shop. He fully expected that Daniel’s procedure would be more successful, believing the male body would adapt better to having a limb removed and reattached. After the surgery, he had kept both Daniel and Chelsea in a sedated state. He wanted to keep as many variables out of the experiment as possible, which meant it was easier to give them feeding tubes than to wake them up and allow them to eat or drink on their own. He knew that the control of scientific variables was what every medical researcher had to fight against. Luckily for him, because he did his own research, he didn’t have to worry about governmental regulations.
Joseph turned the key to the old truck, feeling it shiver as the motor sprang to life. He put the truck in gear and eased off the brake, giving the gas pedal a gentle press with his foot. He pulled away from where he had been parked, still thinking about Daniel. Though he hadn’t woken either Daniel or Chelsea up, he expected their strong bodies to behave better than they had. Chelsea had briefly rebounded, the arm becoming slightly pink over the space of twenty-four hours. Daniel's new arm never regained good circulation. Within about twelve hours of the surgery, Joseph could see the first stages of gangrene forming, the skin turning a mottled red, black and purple. Joseph had sat near the foot of both of their beds, considering what to do, tapping his pen on the notebook he was using to record his observations. Pusing his glasses up on his nose, he remembered the moment he decided to place them individually, waiting until after they passed. He could have bundled up both of the bodies and dropped them off somewhere where they would have been found together while they were still alive. Maybe one of them would have lived, but then he wouldn’t have any results for his journal. Getting the results was the most important thing.
Joseph pursed his lips together tightly as he turned the truck out of the park. Once the gangrene had begun to set in, it didn’t take long for Daniel to become septic. He only lasted another six hours. Joseph was surprised at the rapidity with which Daniel’s system failed and died, the poison from the dead arm causing
his organs to shut down. He had dropped off Daniels' body, laying him at the edge of the parking lot, curled up as though he was a homeless person taking a nap. He had even been kind enough to provide Daniel with a blanket and pillow. Chelsea had lasted a little longer. After a brief turn for the better, about the same time that Daniel died, Chelsea’s arm began to show the same issues of gangrene. It took her another twenty-four hours to die. Joseph never woke her up, knowing that gangrene was too painful. Experiments shouldn’t include suffering if it was at all avoidable.
Joseph carefully turned the blinker on the truck to show he was getting on the freeway. He’d never had a ticket in his life, and he didn’t want to start now. As he drove, he realized that within the next news cycle, there would be news of both Daniel and Chelsea’s deaths. The local reporters had already been focused on the story, given the fact that they were dating and were seniors at Sauk Valley High School. They had both received scholarships to college. Daniel would have been an engineering major, Chelsea was interested in nursing. In a way, Joseph felt bad that they hadn’t been able to enjoy the remainder of their senior year. But if they were truly in love, then it was poetic for them to die together in the name of a noble cause. Or at least Joseph thought so…
2
Stephanie Vincent wasn’t used to early morning phone calls. Her boss, Van Peck, usually wasn’t any good to anyone until at least ten in the morning, even though he was in charge of an ever-growing online newspaper, called The Hot Sheet. Her job didn’t give her any reason to get up at the crack of dawn.
As her phone rang, Stephanie rolled over, a crown of brunette frizzy curls flopping over one side of her face. She glanced at the screen. Six in the morning. Her dog, a pit bull rescue named Ozzy, stretched next to her. “Go back to sleep, big boy,” she said. “Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, “Steph?”
By the sound of the voice, she knew it was her sister, Mary. But something wasn’t right. “Mary? Is everything okay?” Stephanie sat straight up on the edge of the bed, pulling the sheet and comforter over her bare legs. The warmth of her sleep was quickly dissipating in the darkness of the early morning.
There was another pause. “It’s Chelsea… She’s gone.”
It took a moment for her brain to catch up with the words she had just heard from her sister, the fog of sleep subsiding, “Gone? What you mean?” Stephanie switched the phone to her other ear, pulling the blanket from the top of the bed and sliding off. Her mind immediately thought of Mary’s daughter – Stephanie’s niece – as a baby, cooing and laughing. She slipped her feet into a pair of slippers she left by the bed. From behind her, she could hear the thud of Ozzy’s paws as he jumped off the bed to follow her.
“I just… The police were just at our door. They found her body, Steph. She’s gone.”
A few days before, Mary had called Stephanie at work, wondering if she had seen Chelsea. She hadn’t. After a few hours of Chelsea not coming home from her classes at Sauk Valley High School, the police were called in. Her boyfriend, Daniel Arthur, was also missing. The police worked on the assumption that the two kids had run away together, avoiding the drama that was happening in Daniel’s family. Stephanie had spent the last forty-eight hours trying to reassure her sister she was sure Chelsea would call at any minute or just walk right through the front door. She couldn’t imagine what her sister was going through. The closest thing Stephanie had ever experienced to losing a loved one was when a dog she had rescued, a little Corgi mix with stumpy legs named Chuck, had run away. She looked for him for weeks, but never found him. Losing a child had to be so much worse.
By the time the words had left Mary’s mouth that the police had found Chelsea’s body, Stephanie was in the kitchen of her small house. The paper paid her well. She could have bought a larger house in a nicer neighborhood, but she liked the little house that she and Ozzy lived in. It was quiet. It was safe and cozy.
Stephanie pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down at the table, wishing she had brought her blanket with her. “Wait. Tell me again. What happened?” Stephanie felt bad for asking her sister to repeat what she had said. She could hear whimpering on the other end of the phone.
“We were asleep, or at least as much as we’ve been able to rest since Chelsea disappeared. I’ve been sleeping on the couch, just in case she came in. I heard a knock and ran to the door. It was the police. They told me they found her, Steph. They found her body. She’s dead. My baby girl is dead.”
Stephanie tried to shake the sleep from her brain. “Do they have any idea what happened to her? And where’s her boyfriend?” Stephanie knew she was asking questions that Mary probably didn’t have answers to. She couldn’t help herself. The shock of being woken up with such awful news was almost more than she could take.
“They don’t know where he is. They said that her death was suspicious, but they said nothing more. I feel like there’s more to the story, but they just aren’t telling us anything yet.”
A wave of sadness tore through Stephanie. She didn’t have any children of her own and had never been married. Her nieces, all three of them, were like her own kids. Now there were two. Her mind flashed back to the day that Chelsea had been born. Stephanie remembered standing in the hospital near Mary’s bed, holding the tiny warm body that was wrapped in a soft blanket, wearing a pink hat. At the time, she was amazed at how small every part of Chelsea’s body had been. Her mind fast-forwarded to a few years after that when Chelsea had started to walk, giggling and laughing every time she landed on her backside. The memories, and the tears, began to flow. “Oh my gosh, Mary. I’m so sorry. I am so very sorry. I have no idea what to do. What can I do?” she babbled. Stephanie stood up from the kitchen chair, a burst of energy running through her. “Let me just take a quick shower and walk Ozzy. I’ll be right over.”
“Okay.”
As soon as Stephanie hung up the phone, sobs convulsed through her chest. I have to keep moving, she thought. I have to keep moving so I can help Mary. She allowed herself a brief moment to grieve and then stood up from the kitchen chair. As she walked to the bedroom, she dug through a pile of clothes and pulled on a pair of old sweatpants, heading to the bathroom. As she passed the mirror, she caught a look of her face. Her hair, normally a tumble of curls and frizz, was even more wild than usual, probably due to the last of the summer humidity hanging in the California air. The temperatures had been cooling slightly each day, but it wasn’t enough to calm her hair down. Her skin, normally pale and blotchy when she woke up, seemed even more so this morning. Red spots had popped up all over her face, her skin so white it looked like it had been dipped in paint.
Not one to fuss over herself, Stephanie tied her hair back in a ponytail, grabbed a jacket in case the morning was still cool, and a handful of tissues. She stuffed them in her pocket. She retrieved Ozzy’s leash from the utility room by the back door. He was already waiting, ready for their morning walk.
Outside, the morning was crisp and clear. Although it was still dusky, the glow on the horizon cast shadows across the sidewalk as Stephanie and Ozzy walked. A chill ran up her spine, not only for herself, but for Chelsea. What had happened to her niece? Stephanie’s mind raced ahead as she walked. Realizing the police department was probably working the scene as she walked her beloved dog, his nails tapping quietly on the concrete sidewalk ahead of her, Stephanie imagined someone from the coroner's office, wearing gloves, touching Chelsea’s cold body. Who could hurt such a beautiful young woman?
Just two weeks before, Mary had called, excited. Chelsea had gotten accepted into college. She wanted to become a nurse and had applied to Arizona State University, where she was accepted. Stephanie remembered listening, her sister Mary, thrilled for her daughter, but she was worried about her moving to a completely different state to follow her dream. “You gotta let her go, Mary,” Stephanie said. “You don’t want to be the one that prevents her from living her dream, do you?”
“O
f course not. But it’s just, it’s a whole different state!”
Stephanie had giggled at the time. “Wow. You are a genius if you know that California and Arizona are different states!”
Stephanie and Mary had gone through periods when they had been closer and not so close, especially growing up. But once they had both gotten their footing as adults, their relationship had grown. Stephanie was careful to give Mary the room that she needed with her family, and Mary did the same for Stephanie with her career. Stephanie had been a journalism and business major in college and had gone on to work for several newspapers before finally landing with The Hot Sheet. She had started in the newsroom, writing local stories about things that were going on in the community. But once her boss figured out her talent for investigation and administration, they had created an entirely new position for her. By the time the new editor had arrived, Van Peck, she was working as the Executive Assistant to the Editor. Her title didn’t do her job justice, though. Everyone in the office knew that Stephanie really ran the paper. The editor had the final say on what went online, but Stephanie was the gatekeeper that made it happen. She was the enforcer, the encourager, and the disciplinarian for the organization. Junior writers who were smart got to know her and her ways. Junior writers who weren’t generally found their way out onto the sidewalk looking for a new job.
