Wrath
by
E. H. Reinhard
Copyright © 2017
All Rights Reserved
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction by E. H. Reinhard. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Locations used vary from real streets, locations, and public buildings to fictitious residences and businesses.
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Wrath: The Lieutenant Harrington Series, Book 1
Miami homicide lieutenant Nash Harrington has seen countless murders. Blood and bodies are nothing to lose sleep over. The scene he’s just been called to doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary—a male in his thirties has been stabbed to death inside his home’s front doorway. The evidence leads to a woman having been at the scene—a woman who happens to be married to someone else.
Yet what seems to be a run-of-the-mill murder stemming from infidelity turns into a full-blown killing spree.
For this killer, taking the lives of his wife and her lover is merely the beginning. He’ll take the deceit no more. His decision has been made. All the women who've wronged him in the past will die.
Harrington quickly finds the case turning personal when the killer's focus inches closer and closer to home.
Unknown to the lieutenant, one of his loved ones has a history with the killer. And that history is etched in the killer’s mind.
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Table of Contents
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 1
Chris Mercer sat in his truck, staring at the home three down on the left side of the road where he’d parked. The home was an average-sized two-story in an average-sized twenty-year-old neighborhood. He’d been sitting there watching the house for hours. The front door of the home was on the far side, out of Chris’s view. His eyes were locked on the door of the garage facing the street—a garage where his wife’s car was currently parked. The guy who owned the home was named Nick Ludwig, and Chris’s wife was inside, more than likely having sex with the man.
Chris had seen it coming. He knew the signs to look for, as he’d seen them with just about every woman he’d ever dated. He thought he’d seen the signs with his ex-wife, Emily. Yet that was a misunderstanding. With Grace, his wife of one year, it started the prior summer, shortly after they got married. Grace began getting texts and instant messages constantly—she always claimed they were from some friend that he’d never heard of, but the caller always had a female name. The messages started coming later and later. He’d often wake up in the middle of the night to see the glow of his wife’s cell phone. A few times, he even saw Grace awake and returning the incoming messages. Chris had once dissolved some sleeping pills in a bottle of wine. When she drank most of the bottle and passed out, he went through her phone. Chris saw the content of her messages. After the messages came her daily trips to the gym and going out with some friends from work a few times a week. Those few times a week turned into daily occurrences.
Just enough light had come from the overhead streetlights for Chris to catch his reflection in the truck’s side mirror. Gray was overtaking his short dark hair. The front was noticeably thinner than the sides. Bags hung under his eyes from a lack of sleep. Brown stubble covered his thirty-five-year-old cheeks. He and Grace had marked their one-year anniversary a couple of weeks prior. He’d suggested they go on a road trip, see some sights, and spend some time together. The idea, in Chris’s mind, was to get her away from the man she’d been seeing. A way for her to recommit to their marriage. A last-ditch effort to get her back.
Grace had claimed she had to go out of town for work. She was gone for a weekend. Grace didn’t know that he’d put a tracking app on her phone. He spent the weekend watching her movements. Grace had never left town. Most of the weekend was spent exactly where she was at that very moment, Nick Ludwig’s house, though the two did go out for dinner twice. Fine dining each time. She’d turned down going away for their one-year wedding anniversary so she could spend the weekend with her boyfriend. When she returned home, Chris could smell the other man on her skin. He’d had enough. He’d decided how to deal with the situation.
Chris took a hand from the car’s steering wheel and reached for his phone. His fingers were stiff, not having moved for an hour or more. The time displayed on his phone’s screen showed it was a few minutes before midnight. He dialed his wife’s number and held his phone to his ear, his hand steady as a rock. Chris had told her his flight would land at midnight and he’d be home by one. She’d said she was going to catch a movie with her sister, an obvious lie.
“Hi, Hon,” Grace answered.
“Hey,” Chris said. “What are you doing?”
“I just finished at the movies,” she said. “I got home a few minutes ago.”
“So you’re at home?”
“Yeah, why?” she asked.
There was no mistaking that the car he’d followed was hers. There was no chance that she wasn’t exactly where he knew her to be. “What movie did you see?”
“Some girlie movie with Carol. I couldn’t even tell you the name of it. It wasn’t very good.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you just land? How was the flight?”
“The flight was great,” he said. “The best ever.”
“Um, okay. I guess you can tell me about it later. Are you on your way home?”
“Yeah. I should be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes?” she asked.
Chris caught the panic in her voice and smirked. Her location inside that house, and where he was parked at the curb, was almost a half-hour drive from their home.
“Yeah, maybe a little less,” Chris said. “My flight came in, like, tw
enty minutes early, and I waited to call until I was on the freeway.”
“Oh, all right. Do you think that maybe you could make a stop for me?”
“For what?”
“A bottle of wine,” she said. “We’re out of coffee creamer too.”
She was trying to stall him. “I’m beat. I don’t want to stop anywhere,” Chris said.
“Fine. I guess I can go out to get it,” she said. “I mean, if you really can’t stop for me.”
Chris rubbed his eyes. Either he’d spend the time it would take her to get home stopping at the store for her things or she had a reason to leave and not be home when he arrived. “Whatever, I’ll stop,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll see you when you get home.”
“You don’t want to talk to me?” he asked.
“I didn’t say that. I was just right in the middle of a show when you called. It just came back on.”
“Sure,” he said. “Watch your show. I’ll see you soon.”
Chris hung up and tossed the phone on the passenger seat. He slipped his hand down into the door pocket of his truck and snatched his folding knife. He flicked open the four-inch blade and pulled the door handle. His eyes were on the house. Chris shouldered the door open and put one foot out on the street. As he did, the garage door begin to lift. Chris froze and watched. He got back into the truck and swung the driver’s door closed to kill the interior light. His wife’s Acura backed out of the garage and pulled down the driveway. As she crept backward, a man walked from inside the garage after the car. The guy blew a kiss at Grace, and she backed into the street. It had to have been Nick Ludwig. While the name was burned in his memory, Chris had never seen the man in the flesh. Grace flashed her headlights at the man and pulled away. The man walked back into the garage, and the overhead door lowered.
Chris looked back up the street but couldn’t see his wife’s taillights. She must have already made the turn from the guy’s road.
His cell phone buzzed beside him. Chris grabbed it and looked at the screen—a text from Grace. He clicked the button. She’d sent an emoji of a kissy face and heart. She said she was going to hop in the shower, and if he hurried, he could join her.
Chris set his cell phone on the truck’s armrest between the front seats and drove an elbow down into the screen, shattering it. Chris threw open the driver’s door and quickly walked to the house. The streetlights lit his way. Chris made a left into the guy’s paved brick driveway and walked straight to the front door. He looked at the welcome mat that read Ludwig. Chris reached out with his left hand and pressed the doorbell repeatedly with his knuckle.
The knife hung in his hand, and he tucked it behind his right leg. Chris could hear footsteps inside of the home and coming to the door. The sound of the lock flipping caught Chris’s ear. The door pulled open.
“What did you forg—” The man’s question stopped cold when he saw Chris standing there. “Sorry. I thought you were my girlfriend coming back. Can I, um, help you with something?”
“You’re Nick Ludwig?” Chris asked.
“I am,” the guy said.
Chris yanked the blade from behind his leg and jabbed it forward into Ludwig’s belly. He pulled it out.
The man took a wavering step back. His hands went to the wound.
Chris lunged forward and grabbed Ludwig by the back of the head with his left hand and planted the knife into his stomach again. “I’m her husband,” Chris said. “I just want you to know who is killing you.” He pulled the knife out and used Ludwig’s head for leverage to pull him back into the knife. Chris continued to pull the blade out and slide it back in. With the fifth or sixth stab, Ludwig dropped to his knees. Chris took another step into the house and stabbed him in the side of the neck twice. A two-foot stream of blood pumped from Ludwig’s throat. The man tried to cover the neck wound with his hands, but it was no use—he fell over backward. Chris watched the blood pulse through Ludwig’s fingers and join the ever-growing blood pool. A few seconds later, he stopped moving entirely.
Chris turned and walked to his truck. He needed to get his wife her bottle of wine.
And he’d use the bottle to cave her skull in.
CHAPTER 2
I’d been up for an hour. Lucky, my two-year-old Cracker Cur, had been fed and walked and had since gone back to sleep. I figured at about that time, she was in the middle of slobbering up my pillow and doing her best to fill my bed with dog hair. I’d drunk my morning coffee and eaten a quick breakfast of a banana and toast.
I’d heard Amy, my girlfriend, stirring a few minutes before. We’d been together close to two years, but she had officially moved in only a couple of months before. The new living arrangement seemed to be going well. She had spent almost every night at my house prior to moving in, so it wasn’t too much of a change. I’d already been trained on toilet seat etiquette and the expectations of daily showering. She, likewise, had been informed about the invention of a hamper and how to operate it. “Wherever it landed on the floor” was not where dirty clothes went.
I stuck my head through the bedroom doorway. Amy lay facing the ceiling, tapping away at her phone. The light from the phone’s screen lit her face. My dog was beside Amy as I had imagined, and using my pillow to catch drool as I had figured.
“Hey, I need to take off,” I said.
“You’re leaving me already?” Amy asked.
“Yup. I want to get to the station early and hit the gym for a run.”
Amy kicked her legs off the side of the bed and stood. Lucky perked up for a second before plopping her head back down.
Amy walked to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. She looked up at me with her big brown eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Even fresh out of bed and without a stitch of makeup on, she was beautiful. We’d met on the night of my fortieth birthday when a couple of guys from the station took me out to a local bar. Amy had been there with some friends from her work. While leaving, I saw her on her phone, standing next to a car with a noticeably flattened tire. My sergeant, Steve Walsh, and I walked over to her. I introduced us as police officers and asked if she needed any help. She said she was on the phone with her father, who was trying to get a wrecker service out to change her tire. Needless to say, I changed the tire for her. She asked me out for coffee the next day to return the favor. Coffee went well, and we’d been together almost every day since. Though Amy was a good seven years younger than I was, our relationship seemed to click.
She licked her fingers and put them into my hair to do a little finger combing. I normally kept it short on the sides and a little longer on top. A part ran down the left side. I never put anything in my hair or bothered to spend time styling it. Out of the shower and combed was about the extent of things. The monthly haircuts were mainly to keep the gray on the sides at bay. Still, Amy had informed me that I had good hair, for whatever that was worth.
“Have a good day,” she said. She smiled, gave me a peck on the cheek, and covered her mouth with her hand. “Morning breath.”
“Now my hair is going to smell like your breath,” I said.
“That will keep the other girls away, then.”
“Marking your territory, eh?”
“Yup,” she said.
“What time do you have to go in?” I asked.
Amy was a general manager for a big chain store that sold women’s undergarments. She seemed to like it, aside from the retail hours, and I didn’t have any complaints.
“Ten. I should start getting ready,” she said.
“Are you working till close?” I asked.
“Yeah, but then I’m popping over to Kelly’s for our show tonight. So I’ll probably just stay there.”
Kelly was her sister, younger by two years and recently divorced. She lived a solid hour away in Boca Raton. On Tuesday nights they got together and watched some awful television show that they were hooked on. Amy usually stayed over there on nights they watched the show.
“Oka
y,” I said. “You know you guys can always watch it here. I don’t care if she stays over here after. She’s more than welcome. I can always go play in the garage and work on the truck or boat or something if you need some sister time or whatever.”
“I know,” she said. Amy gave me a big smile. “But thanks for saying that.”
“Sure,” I said. My phone buzzed against my leg. I pulled it out and glanced at the screen, which showed a text from my captain. The message said: 187 call in. “Shit,” I said. “Looks like my run isn’t happening.”
“Dead people?” she asked.
“Dead people,” I said.
“All right,” Amy said. “Text me or call me when you can.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you too,” she said.
I left the house, stood in my driveway, and dialed Captain Halloway before I hopped into my truck. Our conversation was brief. He gave me the details of the homicide, which were slim—stabbing, deceased male, no suspects, no murder weapon. The captain said he’d sent the message to the rest of the team, and patrol was on location. I told him I’d call back with an update when I’d been through the scene.
The location of the homicide was roughly a ten-minute drive northwest and in the opposite direction of the station. Steve lived close to where the report had come from, and I imagined he’d beat me to the scene if he’d been ready for work when he got the call. As far as my detectives, I doubted they’d get there before I did. We were still a good half hour from their shifts starting, and most lived closer to the city, which meant that they were probably all sitting in morning traffic somewhere east of the station.
Wrath (The Lieutenant Harrington Series Book 1) Page 1
