Beg to Die

by Beverly Barton

  “Who found him?” Andrea asked.

  “Local law enforcement,” Jim replied. “Both Sheriff Butler and Chief Sloan were together when they discovered Jamie’s body.”

  “How did they find him if he was in a deserted cabin?” Cecil asked.

  “Genny Madoc. She’s a psychic who lives here in Cherokee County,” Jim said. “Crazy as it sounds, Genny had a vision and saw Jamie being killed and got a sense of what area he was in. Sheriff Butler took Sally Talbot and her bloodhounds along to hunt for Jamie. I went with them. I didn’t say anything to anyone until we knew for sure.”

  “How was Jamie killed?” Sheridan asked. “Was he shot? Did some jealous bitch shoot him? Did that Jazzy Talbot do it? I bet she did.”

  “Jamie wasn’t shot.” Jim wasn’t sure how much to tell them, had no idea how they would react to the word torture.

  Reba tugged on his hand. “Are you sure Jamie is dead?”

  “Yes, he’s dead.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “Yes, I saw him.” Jim swallowed. A little white lie, he told himself. Reba needed to hear him say that he’d seen their grandson dead; otherwise she would want to see the body herself.

  “How did she kill him?” Reba asked. “I told him she was no good for him, told him to stay away from her, but she kept luring him back to her, seducing him.” Reba clutched the front of Jim’s shirt. “I want her arrested and prosecuted. I want her punished for what she did. Promise me that you’ll see to it that Jazzy Talbot pays with her own life for what she’s done.”

  “Reba, we don’t know who killed Jamie.”

  “Who else would have done it? She knew she was losing him for good this time, that he was going to marry Laura and they were going to be happy and she couldn’t stand it. She would rather see him dead than happy with someone else.”

  Jim realized his wife was on the verge of hysteria. She was obsessed with the notion that Jazzy had killed Jamie. “I want you to let Dr. MacNair give you something to help you relax. You’re not doing either of us any good by getting so upset.”

  “Damn it, Jim, I know she killed Jamie, and I won’t rest until she’s punished.” Reba jerked away from him and shot up off the sofa. “Bring her to me and I’ll kill her myself.”

  “Has this Talbot woman been questioned?” Cecil asked.

  Before Jim could respond, Laura’s eyes widened and she cried out as she looked anxiously back and forth from her mother to her father. “What if Jazzy didn’t kill him?” Laura grabbed her mother’s hands. With a look of sheer terror in her eyes, she moaned. “I don’t remember …I don’t remember. What if—oh God, Mother, what if I killed him?”

  “Oh, Laura, what nonsense. You’re overwrought,” Andrea said.

  “Why would you think you killed Jamie?” Sheridan scowled at her sister.

  Laura stared at Andrea as if transfixed. “Did I do it?”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were upstairs in your bed all night. Don’t be silly. You had no reason to harm Jamie. You loved him.”

  “But I don’t remember…and Jamie’s dead. And there was blood. I think I remember the blood.”

  “Hush up. Don’t say anything else. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Jamie…Jamie…” Laura kept repeating his name, calling him, as she again escaped her mother’s grasp and started wandering aimlessly around the room. She clutched her belly and cried out in pain, then fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  Dr. MacNair rushed across the room and knelt beside Laura. “My God!” He murmured the words softly, then lifted her up into his arms. That’s when Jim noticed Laura’s slacks. Bright red and fresh, blood oozed through the soft cotton material.

  Jazzy heard the knocking as she emerged from the shower. Someone was trying to bang her door down. Was Caleb that eager? It couldn’t be much past tenthirty. She’d awakened at ten, fixed coffee, downed one cup, then jumped in the shower. The pounding continued without letup. Jazzy rushed into her bedroom, grabbed her robe off the foot of the bed, and put it on as she ran into the living room.

  “Jazzy, open the door!” Genny Madoc cried, her voice edged with panic. “Please, Jazzy, please be here.”

  My God, what was wrong with Genny? She sounded almost hysterical, and Genny wasn’t prone to hysterics. Something terrible must have happened. Just as Jazzy finished tying her housecoat’s cloth belt around her waist, she reached for the doorknob. The minute Jazzy flung open the door, Genny gasped. With tears sparkling in her black eyes, she grabbed Jazzy and hugged her fiercely.

  “Thank God. What took you so long to come to the door?” Genny kept hugging Jazzy.

  “I was in the shower.” Jazzy pulled free and grabbed Genny by the shoulders. “Honey, what’s wrong?” She glanced over Genny’s shoulder and up at Dallas.

  “Let’s go inside.” Dallas put one hand on Jazzy’s shoulder and the other in the center of Genny’s back, then he nudged them into the living room.

  Once inside, Dallas closed the door. Genny grasped Jazzy’s hands. She could tell by the expressions on Genny’s and Dallas’s faces that whatever brought them here on a Sunday morning was bad. Very bad. Terror clutched Jazzy’s heart.

  “Y’all are scaring me to death,” Jazzy told them. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is it Jacob?”

  “No, Jacob is all right,” Genny said.

  “Caleb? Has something happened to Caleb? We—we have a date this afternoon. A real date.”

  “It isn’t Caleb,” Dallas said. “It’s Jamie.”

  “Jamie?”

  Genny nodded, then, tugging on Jazzy’s hands, urged her toward the sofa. Jazzy allowed Genny to guide her until they sat side by side on the overstuffed old couch.

  “Jamie’s dead.” Genny clutched Jazzy’s hands.

  “How? Was it a car wreck? Was he drunk?”

  “He was murdered.” Dallas moved across the room and sat down in the chair opposite from the sofa. “He was killed sometime early this morning.”

  “Murdered? Who? How? Why would…?”

  “We don’t know,” Dallas said. “We don’t know who killed him, but we’re pretty sure it was a woman.”

  Dry-eyed and feeling rather numb, Jazzy looked directly at Genny. “Did you see it? Is that how you know a woman killed him? You had one of your visions.”

  Genny turned Jazzy’s hands over in hers, then squeezed reassuringly. Jazzy was her dearest friend, the closest thing she’d ever had to a sister. If only she could find an easier way to tell her what had happened. But there was no easy way. And Jazzy would want to know the truth—the whole truth. She would trust Genny to be completely honest with her.

  “Yes, I saw Jamie being tortured in one of my visions,” Genny admitted. “I couldn’t see the woman’s face. I got only blurry images of her.”

  “Tortured? She tortured him?”

  “Yes. She wanted him to suffer. I felt her rage. She hated Jamie.”

  “How—how did she…?” Jazzy jumped up off the sofa and turned her back to them.

  Genny realized that the reality of Jamie’s death—his murder—had just now actually registered in Jazzy’s mind. Dallas glanced at Genny and she telepathically heard him say, “Shouldn’t you do something? Get up and go to her? Hug her?” And Genny responded. “No, not yet. She needs time. Jazzy will want to get her emotions under control before she faces us.” Genny knew her best friend like no one else did. They had shared everything—triumphs and tragedies, happiness and heartbreak, good times and bad—since they were small children.

  The quiet in the apartment was deafening. Genny could hear her own heartbeat, could hear Dallas breathing. And the hushed sound of Jazzy weeping stirred Genny’s caring, protective instincts. If this was all Jazzy would have to contend with, then she could deal with it. She would mourn Jamie and then move on. But Genny’s sixth sense told her that Jamie’s death would bring trouble for Jazzy and she would need all the love and support her friends and family could give her.

  J
azzy sucked in a deep breath, then turned to face Genny. “Tell me. I need to know.”

  “She tormented him with knives, razor blades, and a hot poker,” Genny said, the image in her mind as clear as when she’d envisioned it earlier today. She prayed that in time that image would vanish, that eventually she would not be able to recall it at all.

  “Even Jamie didn’t deserve to die that way,” Jazzy said, her voice deceptively calm. Genny knew how badly Jazzy was hurting, how the thought of Jamie suffering and dying tore her apart inside. No matter what had happened between them over the years, there had been a time when Jazzy had deeply loved Jamie. And years ago, she had carried his child for a few brief months.

  “No, Jamie didn’t deserve to die such a horrible death,” Genny agreed.

  “You have no idea who she was? Jacob doesn’t…” She looked at Dallas. “Any clues? Anything that can tell y’all who killed him?”

  “We have our combined forensic teams going over the cabin and the area surrounding the cabin,” Dallas said. “And we might call in Knoxville for some help. Big Jim is going to expect us to pull out all the stops to find his grandson’s murderer. And when a man has the power Jim Upton does, he can get things done that even Jacob and I can’t.”

  Jazzy nodded, then glanced at Genny. “What is it? There’s more, isn’t there? Something else you need to tell me.”

  “The woman who killed Jamie…I saw her hair.”

  “And?”

  “She had short red hair. The exact color and style as yours.”

  Jazzy gasped. “Oh, God, Genny, you don’t think that I—?”

  “No!” Genny bounded off the sofa and rushed to Jazzy. “I know you didn’t kill him.” She grasped Jazzy by the upper arms. “But this woman, whoever she is, wanted to resemble you for some reason. I don’t know why. Maybe she wore a red wig and gold hoop earrings like yours so that, just in case someone saw her with Jamie at a distance, they’d think it was you. Or maybe she wanted to titillate Jamie by doing her best to look a little something like you.”

  “You know I didn’t kill Jamie, but…tell me the rest.” Jazzy pulled Genny’s hands from her arms and clutched their hands together between them.

  “I’m afraid that something will happen, that somehow you’re going to be blamed for Jamie’s death.” Genny looked Jazzy square in the eye. “We have to be prepared for the worst. Dallas and Jacob will do everything they can, but you’ll need a lawyer. A good lawyer.”

  “Aren’t we jumping the gun just a little?” Dallas injected.

  “Maybe a little,” Genny agreed. “But I’m telling you”—she glanced at Dallas and then back at Jazzy—“this situation is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.”

  Jacob left Bobby Joe Harte behind at the cabin near Scotsman’s Bluff while the combined forensic teams of the sheriff’s department and the police department—three people in all—went over the area, inside and outside. He’d already put in a call to the Knox County sheriff and once the Cherokee County coroner, Pete Holt, gave Jacob a preliminary report, Jamie’s body would be sent to Knoxville to the crime lab there. With only an on-site inspection, Pete had said that loss of blood alone or even heart failure from enduring prolonged, agonizing pain might have killed Jamie.

  “No way to tell without a complete autopsy, although I’d say he bled to death,” Pete had told them. “Whoever she is, the lady’s damn vicious. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to piss her off.”

  As he headed his Dodge Ram toward town, Jacob considered possible suspects—women who hated Jamie Upton enough to want to not only see him dead, but to see him suffer. Despite the gruesomeness of the case, Jacob found himself thinking that Jamie’s demise was some sort of poetic justice.

  Jacob snorted. Whoever killed Jamie was sick. Mentally sick in the worst way possible. Psychotic. And very dangerous.

  Although Jazzy would be the first name on everyone’s lips, Jacob knew that, as surely as he knew Genny had been born with Granny Butler’s gift of sight, Jazzy hadn’t killed Jamie. He’d known her all his life. She was not capable of torturing a man to death, not even Jamie, who probably deserved it more than anyone Jacob knew.

  The list of Jamie’s victims was probably endless, but only those now in the Cherokee County area could be considered suspects. Jazzy, of course. And Laura Willis. She might love Jamie, might have intended to marry him, but she had to have known what a bastard the guy was. And if he scratched the surface of the female population in these parts, he would no doubt come up with a few more women with reason to want to see Jamie dead. But as far as Jacob was concerned, his primary suspect was the lady who owned a green Jaguar and admitted that she not only knew Jamie Upton but had been romanced by him. The real clincher was the striking resemblance between Jazzy and Reve Sorrell. With a short, fire-engine red wig on, Ms. Sorrell could easily pass for Jazzy.

  Had the woman come to town with the intention of killing Jamie? Had she sought out Jazzy to make sure they actually looked enough alike to be twins? Did she concoct the diabolical plot to torture Jamie to death before or after she arrived in Cherokee County?

  But the one thing that didn’t make any sense, the one piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit, was why would Reve Sorrell be stupid enough to steal her own wrecked car and chance being seen in it?

  If the whole town wasn’t already hog wild over the news about Jamie’s murder, it was only a matter of time. Before Jamie’s body could be shipped off to Knoxville, reporters from MacKinnon media would bombard local law enforcement with a hundred and one questions that neither he nor Dallas would be able to answer. Not yet. And once the initial shock wore off, Big Jim Upton would start demanding answers. And action. If Jacob didn’t make an arrest by this time tomorrow, there would be hell to pay. But how could a man make an arrest without any evidence?

  A call came in over the radio from Tim Willingham, one of Jacob’s deputies. “Better get over here and take a look,” Tim said. “A Mr. and Mrs. Walker called in a report that something was on fire down the road from their cabin. When the fire department got there, guess what they found off in a ravine, burning like crazy.”

  Jacob’s gut tightened. “A green Jaguar.”

  “Yeah, that’s my guess. The vehicle is burned to a fare-thee-well. Right about the time the fire department showed up, the thing exploded. Sent sparks shooting up in the air. Ernie’s crew is still working on making sure none of those sparks catch anything on fire in the surrounding area.”

  “Make sure nobody bothers anything until I get there,” Jacob said. “And, Tim, make sure the people staying in the cabins within a two-mile area of the site don’t run off anywhere. Somebody might have seen something.”

  Chapter 13

  When Jacob made it to the site, the vehicle was still smoldering. The Jaguar was no longer green, no longer sleek, no longer classy. It was just a burned out hull of a once very expensive toy for a rich girl. Tim Willingham and Moody Ryan, another deputy, had the area sealed off, and Ernie Sweeney, the fire chief, had his squad hosing down the woods surrounding the ravine. A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, less than a dozen people, and no one Jacob recognized right off hand. Tourists, no doubt. Most had probably been just driving by. The cabins dotted here and there in the Cherokee County mountains rented by the day, week, or month and most folks were temporary residents, tourists who seldom stayed more than a week or two.

  Using the rope that his deputies had installed into the ravine, Jacob inched his way downward, getting as close to the ruins as he dared. Once at the foot of the steep but relatively shallow gorge, Jacob released his hold on the rope and walked halfway around the Jaguar’s remains. Enough of the car still existed to take an educated guess as to the make, if not the exact model. He’d bet his last dime that this was Reve Sorrell’s Jaguar, the one stolen from Tillis’s Garage.

  “Keep this area corded off,” Jacob called up to Tim and Moody. “As soon as they finish up over at the cabin, I’ll send Burt, Dwayne, and Earl o
ver here to work with Ernie to check the car over before we have it hauled in.” Burt and Dwayne comprised the county’s forensics team, and the Cherokee Pointe police had only Earl. They were all good at their jobs, but could do only so much, since neither the city nor the county had a state-of-the-art lab.

  “Will do,” Tim replied. “By the way, Jacob, we checked, and there are six cabins within a two-mile radius of here. One cabin is empty, but we spoke to the people in the others.” Tim nodded toward the half dozen interested citizens keeping a respectful distance as they watched the firefighters and lawmen. “The folks who called in about the fire are over there. They’re staying in the nearest cabin. It’s a Fred and Regina Walker.”

  “Tourists?” Jacob asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the other four cabins? Tourists in them?”

  “Tourists in two,” Tim replied.

  “Locals renting the other two?”

  “Caleb McCord’s in one and that lady painter, Ms. Mercer, lives in the other one.”

  Jacob grunted, then climbed back up the hill, using the rope to aid him in his ascent. When he reached the road, he pulled Tim aside. “Look, it’ll save me time if you and Moody could round up—”

  “Been done,” Tim said. “I figured you’d want to question everybody, so I took it on myself to ask all the folks to come on over to Mr. and Mrs. Walker’s cabin. They were real nice and said they didn’t mind a bit.” Tim cleared his throat. “It was all right that I just went ahead and—?”

  “Yeah, sure. Thanks,” Jacob said. “I appreciate your taking the initiative. So let’s go. The sooner I talk to these folks, the sooner we’ll find out if anybody saw anything.” Jacob focused his gaze on Tim. “Or have you already questioned them?”

  Tim gulped. “No, sir. I figured you’d want to do that.”

  Jacob grinned, slapped Tim on the back, and headed toward the cabin that had been built way up in the woods, catercorner from the ravine. His guess was that, although the Walkers had seen the dark smoke rising into the clear blue sky, from the way their cabin was situated, it had been impossible for them to see this section of the roadway or the ravine itself.