Caught Dead

by Patricia Mason

  “Hmmm.” The mayor stopped fiddling with his phone and considered them for a moment. “I know you. You’re that girl from the diner, aren’t you?” He pointed at Belinda.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The mayor turned his gaze on Jonah, and his eyes narrowed for a moment. “And you’re the cemetery caretaker.” The mayor turned on his heel and headed for a room off to the left. “I need a drink. Come into the den and we’ll talk.”

  Drinking before noon. The poor guy. Grief did strange things to people.

  As the mayor walked away, Belinda glanced over her shoulder at Jonah and whispered, “I’ll distract him while you search the upstairs.”

  His first instinct was to refuse. Belinda shouldn’t be left on her own. But his logical mind told Jonah that the safest place for her was with the mayor. Distracting Jessica’s father would keep her out of the middle of a fight when they discovered the killer’s hiding place.

  “Is it okay for Jonah to use your bathroom?” Belinda asked.

  “Down the hall, to the left,” the mayor grumbled, continuing on without breaking stride.

  Nodding, Jonah hoisted the backpack that housed Derek’s ornament further up his arm and then bound up the stairs two at a time. The fourth room he entered was clearly Jessica’s bedroom. Frilly pink and purple decor and a walk-in closet full of designer clothing, shoes and handbags. But no Jessica. He was giving the en suite bathroom a cursory glance when Derek popped in.

  “Nothing in the basement,” Derek said. “Just a bunch of shelves full of wine.”

  “What the hell, dude?” Jonah said. “Where is she?”

  “Dunno.” Derek shrugged. “That bitch is crafty. Mama said the locator spell shows her somewhere in the house but can’t get more precise than that.”

  “Dammit. We can’t very well pull up floorboards with the mayor here. I gotta get back downstairs or he’ll be suspicious. I’m taking the longest bathroom break ever.”

  Jonah headed for the stairs and Derek easily kept pace.

  “Mama thinks we should give up for now and just watch the house. We might catch Jessica trying to leave.”

  Eliza waited for them at the foot of the stairs.

  “Let’s get Belinda and leave,” Jonah said.

  The dark paneling and heavy drapes covering the den’s window made it significantly darker than the hall. Once Jonah’s eyes had adjusted, he had a brief impression of the shelves packed with books along one wall, and the paintings interspersed with taxidermied animal heads on the another. He focused on Belinda seated beside the mayor on a leather sofa, the two of them facing away. From her rigid posture, Jonah could tell whatever they’d been talking about hadn’t pleased her.

  Jonah stood in the doorway. “Belinda, we should go.”

  She didn’t move. The mayor turned his head and gazed at Jonah with an indecipherable frown.

  Jonah felt a twinge in his gut and he stepped into the room. “Bunny,” he said. “You have to be at work soon.”

  “I think she’s going to be late.” The mayor’s voice broke, and the words had a curiously tortured cadence.

  As he came around the edge of the sofa, Jonah saw Belinda’s hands in her lap, her wrists bound together with a zip tie. A grey duct tape gag covered her lips, preventing her from speaking a word, but her wide eyes spoke volumes. Her gaze flicked to the mayor’s lap where a pistol lay against his thighs.

  All breath caught in Jonah’s chest as if concrete had been poured down his throat.

  “Fix her,” the mayor said.

  Oh God.

  “What are you talking about?” Jonah asked the question, but pain in his gut told him the answer even before the feminine voice provided it.

  “He’s helping his beloved daughter, of course.” Jessica emerged from a shadowed corner, showing herself to be even more decayed than just a few hours before. As she stepped under the overhead vent, a waft of conditioned air, circulated her stench around the room.

  How had he ever thought Belinda would be safe with the mayor? This was all his fault. Again, the blame for everything lay squarely at his feet.

  Derek’s sudden appearance at his elbow startled him out of it. “Keep it together, buddy. We can still do this.”

  “Ah,” Jessica said with a happy lilt. “So nice to see you again, Derek. Where’s your lovely mother?”

  Eliza entered the room.

  “There she is.” Jessica laughed as she took a seat in an armchair across from the sofa. “Now the Scooby gang’s all here. We were just about to come to you, but you saved us the trouble. Instead, you send in your queen to try to topple my king. Too bad you miscalculated and I’ve got you in checkmate.”

  “If you hurt Belinda, Jonah won’t do nothing for you,” Eliza said.

  “We don’t want to hurt anyone,” the mayor said. “Just fix Jessica and you can all go.”

  “That’s right.” Jessica winked a milky eye. “God forbid we have to hurt somebody.”

  Eliza said, moving closer to the mayor, “Mr. Mayor, I lost my boy, so I know the pain you got inside. But this ain’t the answer.”

  Blinking, the mayor shook his head a little. “I remember. I’m sorry for you, ma’am, but my daughter’s not dead. She’s right here. She just needs fixing.”

  “That’s not your daughter,” Jonah said, inclining his head. “Can’t you see her body’s rotting away? That’s some kind of demon in there.”

  “No.” The mayor lifted the gun and pointed it at Jonah. “You did this to her and you can fix her.”

  “Jessica’s the Slicer. She’s been killing people,” Jonah said, trying to reason with the mayor.

  Instead, the mayor turned the gun’s muzzle on Belinda. “No.”

  “The bitch killed me. I should know,” Derek shouted and Jessica laughed.

  “He can’t see or hear you,” Jonah reminded him.

  “Yes,” Eliza insisted. “The demon inside Jessica’s body killed my son and the others as part of a deal with the devil.”

  “Who told you that?” Jessica demanded as she leaped from her seat and marched over to them.

  “We also know you have to kill nine people by midnight tonight or be pulled into hell,” Jonah said.

  Jessica turned to her father. “Such lies. My daddy knows I love him. Right, Daddy?”

  “You don’t love anybody but yourself,” Jonah choked out.

  “I used to be so beautiful.” Jessica walked over to a mirror mounted on the wall between a doe head and that of a boar. She gazed at her reflection. As she ran a hand through her matted blond locks, a large clump fell out. “Do you know what torment it is to look like this?”

  “For reals, Haggybooboo?” Derek threw his arms wide and stomped as he barked out laughter. “You cannot be serious right now, expecting sympathy.”

  “I don’t care if you end up looking like the crypt keeper’s twin,” Jonah added.

  “You might not care, but you will do what I want,” Jessica screeched as she smashed her right hand into the mirror. The glass shattered. When she pulled her hand away, a long shard protruded from her palm, and its tip stuck out of the back.

  “Sweetheart.” The mayor jumped up, dragging Belinda by the elbow. She struggled against his hold to no avail. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not hurt, Daddy,” Jessica said, staring at the shard before pulling it free. She then held the shard out in front of her. “But someone’s about to be.”

  Oh God, no. Belinda.

  Jonah lunged at Jessica. From his peripheral vision he saw Eliza go for her just a split second behind him.

  Wielding her shard like a dagger, Jessica swung and jabbed at the two of them to keep them at bay.

  He dodged the makeshift blade and grabbed Jessica, but his hold on her was brief as the sharp edge sliced into his bicep causing Jonah to automatically release his grip.

  Behind her gag, Belinda screamed.

  Jessica swung again and Eliza hissed in pain as the shard’s tip scored a cut through her b
louse and opened a bloody line along her midsection.

  Using her advantage, Jessica dashed to Belinda and held the shard’s tip to her throat. “Back off, or I kill her.”

  Jonah froze. He swung an arm out blocking Eliza from interfering. He grabbed her arm to stop her lunging.

  Laughing, Jessica pulled Belinda from her father’s grasp, holding the shard of mirror against her neck. “Maybe I’ll kill her anyway. I do need one more kill, after all.”

  One? By Jonah’s calculation it should have been two.

  “Surprised?” Jessica continued. “So was your neighbor, old Mrs. Delacorte, when I visited her last night. The police will probably find her body today.”

  “Honey. What are you—” her father began.

  Jessica thrust out an arm toward him, stabbing the mirror shard into the base of his throat. His face paled in shock and pain, as blood and air bubbled from the wound as if he’d suffered a bizarre tracheotomy. He dropped the gun, his hands going up to his neck, trying to stem the blood flow.

  “That’s nine,” Jessica said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Special Agent Mike Wayburn exited the doublewide mobile home, pulling at his rubber gloves, the right one coming off with a snap. Ninety-year-old Margaret Delacorte lay inside behind him, hacked up almost beyond recognition. She’d been dead for only about four hours. No doubt a Slicer victim.

  Another day, another crime scene in beautiful Ambrosia, Georgia.

  CSI Pete Norton followed Mike out into the sunshine. The two climbed down the flimsy metal stairs to the grass below where the female sheriff’s deputy he’d met yesterday waited for them.

  “I canvassed the neighborhood, and no one saw or heard anything last night,” the deputy said eagerly. “Her home healthcare aide found her this morning.”

  “Great,” Mike groused. “No help there.”

  “No,” the deputy said. “But you probably noted that the perp appears to have entered through a back window. The screen was pried off and tossed a couple of feet away.”

  “Any fingerprints?” Mike asked.

  “Nothing lifted just yet,” the deputy said. “But I did find footprints just under the window. Unfortunately, they’ve been obscured quite a bit by the rain just before dawn. We can’t tell much about size or tread.”

  “Dammit.” Pete slapped his thigh. “Another dead end.”

  The deputy shook her head. “Not completely. I followed the possible shoe prints through the field, and they disappeared at the brick wall surrounding the town cemetery.”

  Big surprise, Mike thought. A trail leading to Jonah Morrison. That guy was the Slicer. Mike felt it in his gut. However, the DA couldn’t prosecute the bastard based on Mike’s gut. He had to have evidence. Knowing the kid was the Slicer was different than proving it. So far, everything they had on Jonah was purely circumstantial, little more than rumor. The quality of the evidence in this case didn’t even add up to the probable cause Mike needed to make an arrest let alone proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

  And then there was the mystery of his missing partner. Frank’s car had been discovered parked on Main Street. But Frank still didn’t answer his cell. Pinging it hadn’t provided any leads on his whereabouts either, but Frank had probably disabled that feature. Given Frank’s ambition, Mike knew his partner wouldn’t just go off-line to bang his girlfriend or something. Frank’d been silenced forcefully. Mike just hoped it wasn’t permanently.

  He turned to Pete. “Tell me your guys have some forensic results from the Lawrence crime scene.”

  Pete shook his head even as he looked at his feet. “Nope. They just got it yesterday. These things can take a while.”

  “Light a fire—hell, set off a nuke under their asses if you have to.” Mike pointed to the mobile home. “We can’t afford to give them a while.”

  A two-tone bleep from his phone alerted Mike to a new message. He pulled the device from his pocket, and the face displayed a notification of a missed call and voicemail from Frank more than twenty-four hours ago.

  The voicemail only landed in his phone now?

  The cell service in this burg was for shit. That and the spotty wi-fi in the area made him crazy.

  As Mike walked away from the Delacorte scene toward his car, he called up voicemail.

  Frank’s voice shouted at him through the ether. “Call me as soon as you get this. Just left the diner. The waitress, Kerilynn, says her co-worker, Belinda, is in danger from the Slicer. And guess who she fingered as the perp: Jonah Morrison. I’m on my way to the cemetery right now.”

  Shit. Frank had disappeared while investigating the cemetery caretaker.

  For Mike, the message provided the final nail in the coffin. Jonah Morrison would be in custody before nightfall, probable cause or not.

  * * * * *

  The mayor gasped like a beached guppy, eyes bugged out, blood seeping between the fingers clutching his throat. After a moment, his hands fell to his sides, and he sank to the ground.

  “We can’t let him die,” Eliza screamed as she surged forward, pulling a scarf from around her neck.

  Jonah’s mind and body went into lockdown mode. Suddenly, the scene in front of him wasn’t the scene playing in his brain. Instead, in his mind’s eye he saw his mother lying on the kitchen floor. Her glazed, dead eyes wide open. The metallic smell of her blood pooling.

  “Help me!” Eliza shouted.

  Snapping back to the present, Jonah saw Derek’s ghost hovering almost at the ceiling, his face a stricken mask of horror. Below him, Eliza knelt next to the mayor’s body, pressing her scarf to the gushing wound.

  Her frantic eyes met Jonah’s. “Take over here so I can do a spell.”

  Belinda.

  Jessica.

  Jessica and Belinda no longer stood where they’d been just moments ago. He whirled around. Neither of them were anywhere to be seen.

  He’d let himself be distracted. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Sprinting from the room felt like running under water. His legs moved in slow motion and he couldn’t breathe without choking. He reached the front porch just as a white SUV, tires squealing, tore down the mayor’s driveway. Jessica, a jack-o-lantern-like smile on her lips, didn’t even bother looking over her shoulder as she drove. Belinda sat beside her, eyes wide with fright.

  Jonah charged toward the SUV. The vehicle paused in the street at the base of the drive just long enough for Jonah to jump on the running board and grab hold of the roof rack.

  Jessica glanced through the glass at him, and her evil grin widened just before she punched the gas pedal and the vehicle shot forward.

  Hang on.

  The SUV swerved up onto the curb and sideswiped a rubber garbage can on the neighboring property. The fiery sting of the impact blazed through his hip. The can went flying, but Jonah managed to maintain his grip—barely.

  I can’t let her get away, he thought.

  The car continued to careen down the street, hardly slowing before making a wild right turn. And still Jonah clung to the side.

  The window mechanism whirred and the glass separating him from Jessica lowered. He would have reached through and throttled the bitch if he hadn’t needed both hands to hang on.

  “Stop the car,” Jonah gasped out. “I’ll give you what you want.”

  Jessica laughed. “Yeah, you will. Tonight. I’ll call you. Buh-bye for now.”

  Before Jonah could process her words, Jessica jerked the wheel, and the SUV ran up onto the curb.

  Ahead a metal mailbox mounted on a wood post loomed. Despite his effort to meld himself into the SUV, the mailbox struck him hard in the side, taking him out like a three-hundred-pound sumo wrestler. Landing with a heavy thud on the lawn of a two-story colonial knocked the last of the breath from Jonah’s lungs. But ignoring the pain in his ribs and a wrenched knee, he pulled himself up and prepared to give chase.

  He made a few lurching strides. But after the SUV disappeared around a corner five blocks away, Jonah realized
he would never be able to catch up.

  “Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” The primal scream erupted, doing nothing to release his inner agony.

  The only chance now was to help Eliza save the mayor. The man could not be allowed to die. His death would mean Jessica had completed her cycle and renewed her bargain with the devil for another eight years.

  Holding his side and moving in a limping run, Jonah went back to the mayor’s house where Derek waited in the hall.

  “How—” Jonah began.

  A curt shake of Derek’s head cut him off.

  Jonah hobbled down to the den’s doorway collapsing against the door jamb.

  Eliza stood with bloody hands at her sides, staring down at the body at her feet.

  The mayor lay, mouth open, face like rice paper, eyes glassy and unfocused.

  “He’s dead,” Eliza said, her voice a monotone. “We’ve lost.”

  * * * * *

  “Don’t tell me you can’t get me a search warrant,” Mike Wayburn yelled into his cell at the Assistant DA.

  “Find something concrete and I will,” the arrogant voice came back at him.

  Mike ended the call as he parked at the curb in front of the cemetery. “Prick.” He’d just have to search the kid’s cottage without a warrant and create some exigent circumstances if he found something.

  Glancing in the rearview, he saw that diner waitress Frank had mentioned—Kerilynn something—marching purposefully along the sidewalk and rapidly approaching his position. She might be useful.

  He climbed from the car just as she entered the cemetery gate. She didn’t break stride on her way down the path to the caretaker’s cottage.

  When she got there, she knocked. No one answered and she began pounding on the door with the side of her fist. “Get out here, Jonah Morrison. Right the hell now!”

  Mike came up behind her. “Miss?”

  Kerilynn jumped, giving a squeaky scream. Wheeling around, a hand went to her throat. “Oh! You scared the bejesus outa me.”

  Pulling the ID from his pocket and flipping it open in one motion, Mike closed in on her. “Sorry to startle you. GBI Special Agent Mike Wayburn. I’m part of the team investigating the recent murders.”