Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1)

by Jeramy Gates

  Maddie stood behind the curtains, staring out the front window as Frank approached the barn. The uninvited guests had pulled the RV inside, and now they had the doors mostly closed. The space left between them was just wide enough for Frank to fit through.

  Don’t you do it, Maddie thought desperately. Don’t you dare go in there, Frank!

  Frank stopped a few yards away and called out to the intruders: “You in there, you’re trespassing. If you don’t get out of there, I’ll call the police!” Frank’s voice was distant, swept away by the wind so that Maddie could barely make out his words. She watched, her chest tight, her right hand unconsciously squeezing the curtain into a knot. Her chest rose and fell, her breath coming in short gasps. She was hyperventilating.

  Slow breaths, she told herself. Breathe through your nose…

  A figure emerged from the barn, a heavily built man in his fifties with silver hair and enough of a gut that it was hanging over his belt buckle. The man was large, even larger than Frank, who was a solid six feet. The stranger must have been six-four, or close to it.

  They exchanged words. Maddie couldn’t hear what was said, but the man laughed and Frank seemed to relax a little. The man had made some sort of mistake, she realized. He’d come to visit relatives, and had simply pulled into the wrong barn. He was going to leave. She relaxed her grip on the curtain. The man turned to go back into the barn, and Frank followed him.

  A wave of terror washed over her as Maddie’s husband disappeared into the shadows. Why was he going in there? Frank should have known better than that. Something about all of this seemed very wrong. Maddie glanced at her phone again. Still no reception.

  Maddie hurried out the back door, and around the greenhouse. She started across the driveway but then heard a shout in the direction of the barn. She glanced in that direction just in time to see a flash of light inside. A thunderous kaboom rattled the windows. The sound echoed down the hill and faded in the distance.

  Maddie waited, breathless, praying silently to every god whose name she could remember that Frank would come walking through that door. A gust of wind whipped up a cloud of dust. The shadows seemed to stretch across the driveway, reaching out towards her as the sun touched the horizon. Frank’s face appeared, and she almost screamed with joy. Frank took two awkward steps out of the barn and then tumbled to the ground. He landed face-first in the dirt. The back of his white terrycloth robe was stained red with blood. Maddie screamed.

  “Frank! Oh my God, Frank!”

  She began to run towards him, but the tall man appeared in the leather jacket appeared behind him. The second man, the one with the shotgun, stepped out and stood there, looking down over Frank’s body. He glanced at Maddie and then leveled the barrel at the back of Frank’s head. Maddie turned and ran.

  She crossed the driveway in three steps and began climbing the embankment towards the trail. The second shotgun blast went off behind her, and Maddie flinched. She bent forward, clawing at the dirt, half crawling up the steep terrain. She knew what the killer had done. He’d put the gun to Frank’s head and finished him off. Her husband was dead. And if she didn’t get out of there, she would be, too.

  Maddie’s chest tightened as she thought of Frank. For all his imperfections, she had truly loved the man. They had been together so long that she couldn’t even imagine life without him. Part of her wanted to stop, to go back to them and let them kill her, too. That would be easiest. It would all be over in a few minutes… But what about the children? The grandkids? Maddie couldn’t bear the thought of leaving them on their own.

  She made it to the top of the embankment and began to run. The men called out, telling her to come back. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder and saw the younger one clambering up the hill behind her. Maddie put on a burst of speed.

  Ahead, near the top of the slope, Maddie could see a line of fog crawling across the tops of the redwoods. Suddenly, she was no longer thinking about getting a signal on her phone, or calling the cops. She was running for her life. She needed a place to hide.

  A heavy weight tackled her from behind, and Maddie crashed into the rocky hillside. She kicked, clawing at the ground as Loki turned her over. Her hand closed on a rock and she swung at his face as hard as she could. Loki saw the attack coming. He dodged out of the way. A glancing blow struck him across the cheek. It was hard enough to open the skin. Loki let out a stream of curses. He straddled her torso, and forced the rock out of her hand. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek, along his jaw line, dripping onto her face as he bent over her.

  “Game on lady,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’m gonna have fun with you.”

  Chapter 12

  Val was in the shower when Riley woke the next morning. He sat up in bed, feeling somewhat groggy, his head filled with half-remembered memories of dinner and drinking and… a smile came to his lips. And a lot more, he thought. Then the smile vanished as he remembered what Valkyrie had said to him right before their lovemaking session: “Do you want to die a virgin?”

  How had she known? How could someone he’d only met two days ago know that he had been a virgin? Worse yet, how many other people might know? Was he the laughingstock of the entire county?

  It didn’t matter now. He wasn’t a virgin anymore. Not by a long shot.

  He crossed the room and stood nude before the mirror. He wasn’t bad looking, he decided. A bit thin, perhaps a bit pale. Valkyrie was right, though. He was too uptight. The way he dressed, the way he acted… he’d made himself into a nerd, and not the good kind; not the kind who makes a billion dollars on a startup website. No, Riley was the other kind. Val had showed him that.

  He wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but standing in front of that mirror, he saw himself for the first time in the way that a woman might. Clean cut, clean-shaven, baby-faced and innocent. Not exactly the sort of thing to set a woman’s heart thumping. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure what Valkyrie had even seen in him. Unless it was pity she had felt for him…

  The thought of her set him wondering, feeling somewhat guilty about sleeping with a woman he hardly knew; wondering if that made him a bad person. Riley’s mother wouldn’t have approved. She was a stern Christian woman, conservative to the bone. He knew what she’d say: “Fornicators go to hell, right along with rest of the ungodly wicked sinners!”

  Riley bent over to scoop up his clothes. As he did, he noticed Val’s jacket lying on the floor and gathered it up as well. As he tossed the pile onto the bed, Val’s wallet fell to the floor. Her ID slid out onto the beige shag carpeting. Riley picked it up, smiling.

  You bagged yourself a federal agent, he thought. The guys in high school would never believe that. Except that high school had been twelve years ago, and Riley felt embarrassed just for thinking it. He opened the wallet to replace the ID and noticed another ID sticking out of the slot behind the first. Out of curiosity, he pulled it out.

  The second ID bore the exact same picture of her, but this time the card read: Valkyrie Smith, U.S. Marshal. Behind that, he saw a third with the words Homeland Security Agency.

  “What the…” he mumbled.

  “Is that you?” Val said, turning off the water. The shower door slid open, and Riley heard Val stepping out of the stall. He fumbled with the IDs, trying to shove them back into place. Valkyrie stepped back into the room as Riley tossed her jacket aside and snatched up his pants. Nervously, he started climbing into them. Val leaned up against the wall, looking him up and down, the towel still wrapped around her naked body.

  “In a hurry?”

  “A little,” he said. “I should get back to the office. I completely bailed on that story yesterday. Jackie’s going to have my head.”

  “I bet she will. Sure you don’t want to get breakfast?”

  “I better take a rain check. You go ahead, I’ll call a cab.”

  “You sure?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll call you later.”

  “Mmhmm.”

/>   Riley finished getting dressed, and left the room as quickly as possible. He didn’t even bother to comb his hair or tuck in his shirt. On the way down the stairs, he pulled out his cell phone and called a cab. As soon as he hung up, he dialed Jackie’s number.

  She let the phone ring a few times before she picked it up. “Yeah?” she said with an apathetic sigh. Riley started by apologizing for leaving her in the lurch with the article. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Bodega Bay.” Riley passed a window and glanced at his reflection. He was a mess. Ratty hair, rumpled clothes that looked like he’d slept in them. He barely recognized himself.

  “Bodega?” said Jackie. “I should have known. Are you coming into the office today? I have class in thirty minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Great. I’ll see you this afternoon. Oh, and Riley… wait until you see what I dug up on that fed of yours.”

  Riley’s gut twisted up as the line went dead.

  Chapter 13

  After Riley’s hasty departure, Val toweled off and started getting dressed. It was then that she noticed her suit jacket lying on the bed, and her wallet poking out of the pocket. She frowned. Valkyrie experienced the curious notion that Riley might not be the naïve innocent he pretended to be. He was, after all, a reporter. Had he been snooping through her things?

  She laughed, dismissing the thought entirely. She went into the bathroom to dry her hair.

  Fifteen minutes later, Val was back on the road. On her way to the Marigold RV Park, she called Matt to fill him in on everything that had happened. “You should have called me sooner,” he said as she finished.

  “Why? What good would that have done?”

  “I have access to satellite imagery,” he said. “Sometimes I do, anyway. I never know when my connection will be online, but if you had called last night, I might have been able to track the motor home visually.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “What were you doing anyway, that you were too busy to call?”

  Val smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Ah, sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s fine, Matt. I’m just teasing you.”

  “Are you okay? You sound… I don’t know. Melancholic.”

  “Is that a word?”

  “I think so. Is something wrong?”

  “It has been a long time since Tom died. To be honest, Matt, I thought I might never have sex again. Then I met this reporter, and he just-”

  “Wait! Riley? The nerdy guy who doesn’t even know how to make a blog?”

  “It wasn’t about his resume.”

  “Good grief. I guess nerds really are back in style.”

  “Very funny. He’s a nice guy. At my age, life isn’t a popularity contest anymore. It’s about who people are on the inside. And what they can do in bed,” she added with a giggle.

  Matt groaned. “I don’t think I’m old enough to have this conversation.”

  “Sorry, sometimes I forget you’re just a college kid.”

  “Just a college kid? Tell me you didn’t say that.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re young. Life is still a mystery to you. For me, it’s… well, I’ve already done all that. I settled down, raised a family. I was planning an early retirement.”

  “I get it. You never thought you’d be in this situation.”

  “Exactly. Here I am, forty-three years old and single again. And that’s just the start of my problems. I don’t mean to bother you with all of this. I suppose it’s just that you’re my only company these days. You’re a friend. Someone I feel like I can talk to.”

  “What about the reporter? You can’t talk to him?”

  She laughed. “Definitely not. You know I can’t risk getting close to anyone here. Besides, Riley is a nice guy, but I could never be close with him. If I thought that was even remotely possible, I wouldn’t have slept with him last night.”

  Matt sighed through the speakerphone. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Val. You could have a normal life, you know. You could start over. Give up this obsession.”

  “It’s not an obsession. I’m just driven, that’s all. I’m dedicated.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “It’s a matter of degrees.”

  “It’s obsession. You refuse to give up this vendetta, even though it’s probably going to get you killed. Each time you get a little closer to this guy, you’re in a bit more danger. You’re pushing your luck.”

  “Not a chance. That monster killed my son; your best friend. He killed Tom, and Kyle, and how many others now? Odin just killed an entire family this weekend. He won’t stop on his own, and nobody else knows him the way I do.”

  “All right. I’ll try to hack that satellite feed and search for the RV.”

  “Thanks, Matt. Keep me updated.”

  “You do the same.”

  Val hung up just in time to get a call from Diekmann. He sounded tired.

  “How are you?” he said. “You had a rough day yesterday.”

  “I’m fine,” Val reassured him. “I’m going to stop by the campground to see if I can dig up any more clues.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll send Nate out to give you a hand.”

  “No need, sheriff, I’ve got it under control. I’ll call you if I learn anything. Thanks for checking up on me.”

  “No problem. We look after our own around here.”

  The sheriff hung up, leaving Val to wonder whether he was genuinely concerned about her, or if he was just trying to guilt her over her small deception. She decided it was the former. According to everything she had heard about sheriff Diekmann, he truly was a good man. An old-fashioned sort, who genuinely cared about the people he worked with. Of course, realizing this only had the effect of making Val feel guilty.

  It was cool and foggy along the river when Valkyrie pulled into the RV park. It was almost nine a.m., but most of the trailers were dark and the office was closed. Technically, it wasn’t so much an office as a big wooden box. The fact that it was closed really just meant the manager had let down the long plywood board that covered the opening in front.

  Val parked along the road next to Odin’s RV space. The area was a mess, and it stank worse than a city dump. A garbage can had spilled out along the eastern edge of the lot, and nobody had bothered to pick it up. Odin’s sewer line was also lying alongside the road, and the pipe it had been connected to had been left open, letting the smell of the sewer tanks just roll out into the park. Val crossed her elbow over face, breathing through the fabric of her jacket. She kicked the sewer cover closed, and tried not to gag.

  She used the tip of her cane to poke through the trash, hoping to find a receipt or document that might identify Odin’s partner. Instead, she found a large collection of porn and biker magazines, mostly of the bondage and S&M persuasions. They had all been purchased over the counter, so they had no shipping addresses printed on the covers.

  Odin and Loki were apparently two of a kind, not just when it came to their porn, but also their dietary choices. Their refuse consisted primarily of wrappers of the fast food and candy varieties, and a whole lot of empty soda cans. She also found a few empty beer bottles and one plastic jug of cheap vodka.

  “I thought you might be back,” said a woman’s voice. Val turned to see Leann standing at the side of the road. She pulled her sleeve away from her face and found that the air had cleared a little.

  “I didn’t let anybody touch anything,” Leann continued. “When that motor home hauled out of here yesterday, I assumed that was the guy you were looking for.”

  “You assumed right,” Val said. “Would you mind letting me see his registration information?”

  “Sure, come on over to the office and I’ll pull it up.”

  They made the short trek to the office together in silence. When they got there, Val leaned her cane against the wall and helped Leann prop up the
plywood window cover. Once they had it in place, Leann climbed over the counter into the office. She pressed the power button on a very old Apple desktop computer, and apologetically said, “Give it a minute. We’re sort of low-tech around here.”

  “I see that. Why don’t you ask the owner to put a door in this thing?”

  “Oh, I’ve asked many times. Dad’s just too dang cheap to have somebody do it for him and too lazy to do it himself. That’s the downside of working with family. On the other hand, I live twenty feet away from work, rent is free, and I come and go as I please. And I’ve got more spending money than all my friends put together.”

  “There is that,” Val said with a smile.

  “Okay, here we go. Space twenty-seven, Randy Sadler.” She turned the screen so Val could look it over.

  “That registration information is correct?” she said.

  “Yep, I check every one myself. Nobody parks here without a valid registration. I know the law.”

  “Can you print me a copy?”

  “Sure, just give the printer a minute to warm up…”

  Val considered calling Matt to see if he could run down the registration info, but she already had him working on one thing. She decided the fastest way to get the information she wanted was to go right to the sheriff. There was a danger in that, of course. There was always a danger, every time she talked to a real cop. But for the moment, Sheriff Diekmann seemed not only convinced of her false identity, but eager to cooperate in any way possible.

  Her feelings of guilt aside, Valkyrie was determined to use what resources she had. This wasn’t about whether or not she was a real cop, or whether she had betrayed the sheriff’s trust. It was about stopping a serial killer.

  Twenty minutes later, Val poked her head through the door in Diekmann’s office. He waved her in. “Got anything for me?” he said. She handed him the printout Leann had given her.