by Rita Herron
“Yeah, if you must know, I am,” Deputy Kimball muttered. “What’s it to you?”
Cal shoved the paper on the desk in front of Kimball. “Do you know anything about this?”
Kimball slurped his coffee, blinked several times, then seemed to focus on the article. His eyes widened in distress. “Shit.”
“You leaked that information?” Cal asked, not bothering to disguise his fury.
Panic streaked Deputy Kimball’s face. “I . . . don’t know. I mean . . . maybe.”
Cal tapped the paper, indicating the woman’s name. “Do you know this woman Carol Little?”
Kimball’s face went ashen. “Fuck. She . . . set me up.”
Cal silently counted to ten to keep from jerking the idiot by the collar. “What do you mean, she set you up?”
“I went to Blues and Brews last night to unwind and had a couple of drinks.”
“Let me guess,” Cal said when Kimball hesitated. “She joined you for some drinks, then you slept with her.”
“I told her I didn’t do interviews,” Kimball argued. “But then I guess . . . maybe I said something when I was half-asleep.”
“Do you realize you could have just blown the case?” Cal said. “The rose stem and the bridal gown were details I wanted withheld to weed out false confessions. Now that it’s public knowledge, we may get a string of calls claiming to be the killer. And there’s the chance of copycats.”
The deputy scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I—I screwed up.”
“Yeah, you did. Did you tell her about the victim’s hair being cut, too?”
“No,” the deputy said, although his voice lacked conviction.
Cal’s phone buzzed, and he checked the caller ID. Linnea Toyton. Now the shitstorm would begin.
He pressed Connect. “Agent Coulter.”
“Did you have to tell everyone about that wedding dress?” Linnea cried. “My phone has been ringing off the hook. And that blasted reporter is at the door demanding an interview!”
Cal gritted his teeth. “Don’t open the door. I’ll be right there. I need to talk to you anyway. I want you to go with me to your daughter’s apartment to see if anything is missing.”
“Fine, just get over here and stop this craziness. I don’t want my daughter’s death used to get publicity for some psycho lunatic.”
Cal jogged toward the door. “I’m on my way.”
As long as Anna had lived away from Graveyard Falls, she’d felt safe.
But two nights back in the town, back in the house where she’d grown up, back under her father’s thumb, and the nightmares had returned.
That story about the murdered girl hadn’t helped. In fact, she had déjà vu.
Remembering that she’d tucked her high school diary under the mattress of her bed, she dug it out, surprised but relieved it was still there. She’d worried her father had found it and destroyed it.
She ran her hand over the pale-pink cover and carried it to the kitchen to look at while she had coffee. These pages were filled with her innermost thoughts and dreams and pain. No matter how far she’d run, she’d carried the shame and fear and disgust with her.
Disgust for the boy she’d loved who’d turned out to be a killer.
Disgust with herself for loving him anyway.
How had she not seen what he was doing? What he was really like? The sheriff and press had asked her that a million times. She’d asked herself the same question for the past few years.
Aching for her lost innocence, she skimmed the diary entries.
Today I watched Johnny at football practice. Everyone on the team looks up to him. He’s the star quarterback. So good-looking with his bronzed skin and dark-brown hair. And his muscles. Lord, Daddy says it’s a sin to notice such things, but I can’t help it. That boy is built in a way that I can’t help but lust after him.
Daddy says that’s wrong. That good girls don’t have carnal thoughts.
But I’m weak, and at night when I go to bed, I look at the ceiling and dream about him. I imagine him smiling at me. Kissing me. Wanting me to be his girlfriend.
Sometimes I close my eyes and I feel him touching me.
Only, Johnny is so popular he doesn’t even know who I am.
She flipped to another entry, four months later.
This is the best day. I can’t believe it! Johnny failed his geometry test, so Ms. Grover asked me to tutor him. I’m actually going to get to talk to Johnny!
A loud knock at the front door punctuated the silence, startling Anna. Who in the world could that be?
No one knew she was home. She’d intentionally planned it that way. And her father’s friends had dwindled after she’d become the center of the town’s gossip.
Her father’s footsteps echoed as he shuffled from his room. What little of his gray hair was left stood up in tufts, his robe was undone, his pajama bottoms sagged on his bony frame. He’d lost so much weight he was just a skeleton of the big, brawny man who’d raised her.
“Who the hell’s at the door?” he growled.
Anna shoved the diary into her purse on the floor, jumping as the knock sounded again. “I don’t know.”
“If it’s that nasty Johnny boy, you tell him he ain’t welcome here.”
Pain wrenched her heart as anger surged inside her. Her father’s dementia grew worse every day. Sometimes he could remember things that happened forty years ago but not her name or how to get to the grocery store.
“Dad,” she said calmly. “It’s not Johnny. You put him in prison, remember?” And you ruined my life.
“Then get the damn door.”
Anna frowned, then picked a piece of lint off her sweatshirt, anxious to get rid of whoever it was. She’d had to come here to try to convince her father to go into an assisted-living home. God knows they couldn’t live together.
The knock came again, and she yanked the door open with a scowl. A thin, attractive woman about her age dressed in a suit stood at the door, the wind whipping her bob around her face.
“Hi, my name is Carol Little. I’m looking for Sheriff Buckley. Are you his daughter?”
Panic shot through Anna, resurrecting memories of the newspapers that had plastered her name across the South.
“I’m a reporter—”
“I know who you are, but my father isn’t well. He can’t help you.”
Carol pushed at the door, trying to shoulder her way in. “Then I’ll talk to you. You were involved with Johnny Pike years ago, weren’t you?”
Sweat broke out on Anna’s neck. “Go away and leave us alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”
Fighting tears and paranoia, she slammed the door in the woman’s face.
A knock came a second later. “I said go away,” Anna shouted. “If you don’t, I’ll have you arrested!”
She leaned against the door, trembling as she waited until the woman’s car disappeared out of sight.
She couldn’t go through this again. She didn’t know the girl who’d just been murdered, and Johnny wasn’t involved. He was in prison.
This time they had to leave her alone. She had her own secrets to protect.
Sheriff Buckley’s head throbbed as if the devil had lit it on fire. He paced his bedroom like it was an eight-by-eight cell.
Ever since Anna had come back, shoving pills down his throat and watching him like he was some sick, old demented man, he’d felt like he was losing his mind.
He’d mixed up names and places. Hell, he’d thought that Johnny Pike was at the door knocking.
A minute later, he’d remembered that he’d taken care of that boy a long time ago.
But something else nagged at his mind . . .
He walked into the bathroom and washed his face, but when he looked i
n the mirror, he didn’t even recognize himself. He needed a shave, his eyes looked bloodshot and red, and he had scratches on his cheek.
What the hell? How had he gotten those?
He dried his face with the towel, then tossed it down, but saw his clothes on the floor in a pile. His heart banged with fear.
He stooped down and examined his jeans and shirt. They were damp, covered in leaves, and thorns were stuck in his jeans.
Then he saw blood on the handkerchief he always carried.
His vision blurred, the room faded, and he was suddenly staring at woods.
Thick trees stood side by side like sentinels, the branches winding together like arms guarding the secrets inside.
Between the branches he saw the falls. The thornbush.
Twigs snapped as he stepped forward and inched his way to the falls. Someone was there.
A body.
Shit. The woman was lying on the ground in a wedding dress, the stem of a blood-red rose jammed down her throat, the rosebud on the ground beside her.
He staggered back against the wall as he remembered going to the falls the night before. He had stayed all night.
But he’d lost time somewhere in there.
Then he’d seen the dead girl’s body, and it had sent him back thirty years to when it had all started . . .
The roses the boys at high school used as an invitation to prom . . . just as he’d done with his wife, Lilith.
Just as the Thorn Ripper had . . .
Nausea choked him, but he grabbed his jacket and boots, then snuck out the door. He had to go back there now.
See if what he’d remembered was real.
Cal braced himself for Mrs. Toyton’s wrath as she approached him outside her daughter’s apartment. She had a right to be angry.
“That reporter left, but she’s called me twice since,” she said. “She knew about the dress. Please tell me you didn’t mention that that maniac cut Gwyneth’s hair.”
“I’m sorry, the information about the wedding gown wasn’t supposed to be leaked. But no, she doesn’t know about the hair.” He gestured for her to lead the way into her daughter’s apartment. “And I promise you whatever you tell me will remain confidential.”
She opened the door, her face paling as she glanced around the interior. A picture of Gwyneth and her mother hung on the wall in the foyer, and the woman broke down.
Cal patted her back. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I really am.”
She swiped angrily at her tears and straightened her spine. “Just find out who hurt my little girl.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will.” Cal stepped into the entryway. “I need you to see if anything of your daughter’s is missing.”
“Like what?” Mrs. Toyton asked. “You think her death was about a robbery?”
No, he didn’t think that at all. But he didn’t want to share his theory yet.
Or that this unsub might kill again.
“It’s just routine. Was she wearing something personal like a favorite scarf or a piece of jewelry?”
Mrs. Toyton’s eyes widened as if she’d just thought of something, then she hurried to her daughter’s bedroom. Cal watched as she rummaged through Gwyneth’s jewelry box. She looked frantic for a minute, then searched the top dresser drawer.
“She had this charm bracelet she always wore.” Anguish darkened her eyes. “Was it with her when you found her?”
Cal mentally ticked through the personal items recovered with the body—nothing but the bridal dress. She hadn’t been wearing any jewelry.
“No,” he said. “I’m afraid not.”
Mrs. Toyton dropped onto the bed, her chin quivering. “Her father gave her the bracelet on her birthday right before he died. She never took it off.”
“Was it valuable?”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “The charms were inexpensive, but it was special to her.”
Cal gritted his teeth.
Serial killers took souvenirs . . .
So it obviously meant something to the killer.
Cal drove straight to the state prison. It was time to talk to Johnny Pike.
He met with Warden Brisbin as soon as he cleared security, and explained the circumstances. “I want you to analyze his mail one letter at a time. See if anyone is enamored with him and his MO, if someone wants to emulate or impress him, if he’s been in contact with someone and mentored them.”
“We’re behind on the mail, but I’ll personally see that his is pulled going back the last year.”
“Send anything suspicious to my lab.” He handed the warden his card. The warden escorted him to an interrogation room, where a guard had already brought Pike.
Pike had been eighteen when he’d been locked up. The years incarcerated had hardened him from a young boy to a tough, angry man who bore the scars of prison life.
Cal crossed his arms. “My name is Agent Cal Coulter. I’m here because of the recent murder in Graveyard Falls.”
Pike muttered something beneath his breath.
“What was that?” Cal asked, his voice hard.
“I said I knew you’d show up here.”
Cal raised a brow. “Because you knew the murder was going to happen.”
“No,” Pike said, his tone controlled but lethal. “Because I was railroaded by that sheriff once. It stands to figure with my parole coming up that he’d do anything he could to keep me locked up, even point fingers at me for some random crime.”
“It’s not a random crime.” Cal dropped the folder of pictures on the table, opened it, and spread them in a row.
Crime photos of Gwyneth lying in the snow in the wedding dress, the rose stem jammed down her throat, blood dotting her mouth and tongue, her hair hacked off.
“Good God,” Pike whispered.
His shocked expression appeared to be genuine. But Sheriff Buckley had painted him as a psychopath.
“Have you had contact with anyone from that area?”
Pike shook his head, but his eyes were glued to the picture.
“How about a visitor? Someone who wanted to pick your brain about the Thorn Ripper case?”
“The only people who contacted the warden to see me are the reporters, and I refused to talk to them.”
“If you tell me what you know, it might work in your favor when the parole hearing comes up.”
“Right. If Sheriff Buckley has anything to do with it, that will never happen.”
Cal cleared his throat. “Then do it to prevent another girl from suffering. Because if this guy is copying you, he’s going to kill again.”
Pike clenched his jaw. “I can’t help you because I don’t know anything,” he said in a low voice. “Now this interview is over.”
He looked to the guard. “Take me back to my cell.”
Cal watched him disappear out the door, the man’s anger lingering like a dark force.
Hopefully Pike’s mail would offer them a lead. And if he learned the man was hiding something, he’d make sure parole never happened.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mona tried to shake off the disturbing idea of a serial killer in town as she met with her clients.
Her first patient of the morning was a repeat. A woman named Leslie Combs, whose husband had been abusing her. The fresh bruises on the woman’s face triggered Mona’s protective instincts. This time Leslie had called the deputy, who’d arrested Whit Combs.
But this was a cycle, and when he was released, which he probably would be, he would come back after her.
Mona gave Leslie the name of a friend who would help her take refuge in a women’s shelter until she could relocate.
A knock sounded, and her assistant, Aimee, cracked the door. “You have a new patient. She just called this morning, and I told her we’d fit her in.”
“Back
ground?”
“Her name is Sylvia Wales. She needs grief counseling.”
Mona’s heart clenched with sympathy. “Send her in.” She walked around her desk to greet the woman, and was surprised to recognize her.
It was the same woman with the baby she’d seen at the housing development where Kay Marlin lived.
Sylvia was about her age, late twenties, with dark-blonde hair and expressive green eyes full of pain. “Thanks for fitting me in.”
Mona clasped her hand. “Of course. My assistant said you came for grief counseling. May I ask who you lost?”
“My husband.” A wariness flared in her expression that suggested the loss was recent. Her gaze landed on the photo of Mona and Brent on the bookshelf, and Sylvia started to back out the door as if the sight of any happy couple made her sad.
“I know this is hard,” Mona said. “But stay and talk to me.”
Sylvia hesitated, but finally gave a short nod, then chose the love seat. Mona’s heart immediately went out to the young woman as she seated herself across from her. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Mona said. “I know people say they understand and that they know what you’re going through, but I really do. I recently lost my husband as well.”
Sylvia seemed surprised at her admission. Mona was surprised herself. Normally she didn’t discuss her personal relationships with a patient. But Sylvia had noticed the photograph and she’d thought sharing might help, that they were kindred spirits.
Mona reached for Sylvia’s hand and squeezed it. “Tell me about your husband. What was his name?”
For a moment, Sylvia looked as if she was going to bolt, but she took a deep breath and began. “Ted. He was a wonderful man.” Sylvia’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “He was tall, handsome, a hard worker. He liked to renovate houses.”
“I saw your baby. Was he Ted’s son?”
Sylvia studied her hands.
“Sylvia?”
“Yes.” When she looked at Mona, she lifted her chin. “We were so excited to have a little boy.”
The pang of her own loss hit Mona, but she swallowed back a comment about her miscarriage. “What happened to Ted?”
