by Ritu Sethi
Kill Me Why?
RITU SETHI
Kill Me Why?
Chief Inspector Gray James Detective Mystery Book 2
Copyright © 2018 by Ritu Sethi
His Hand In the Storm: Chief Inspector Gray James Murder Mystery Series Book 1
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-9995609-3-5
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialog are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
BOOK 3: COMING SOON
THE DEADLY 3’S~SUBSCRIBE HERE
CONTENTS
Kill Me Why?
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For Jacob
CHAPTER ONE
O N Saturday, December 23, Chief Inspector Gray James unknowingly drove towards the Stitcher’s third crime scene.
“Tell me where we’re going,” he said to his passenger.
“No, not yet.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid you might say no. And you’re needed on this case.”
“Then I may as well turn this car around now.”
“No, you won’t. Your curiosity would take you off the edge of a cliff. Don’t worry. That won’t happen today.”
Driving across dark mountainous roads, jostling headlights flashing upon moss-ridden boulders, towering pine, and the occasional startled feral eyes in the bushes, Gray kept his meditative calm, held at bay the gloom which threatened to consume him in those unguarded moments.
Moments when Gray remembered.
Ordinarily, his passenger, Forensic Pathologist John Seymour was a proverbial fountain of bubbling information. He liked nothing better than stepping past the confines of his job and accompanying Gray on cases – and yet now, he sat stolidly in the passenger seat of the Lotus Exige, his round silver-rimmed glasses sitting below thick blond brows resembling caterpillars trying to jump off his face.
The thrashing Pacific and quaint village of Searock lay miles below, as did Gray’s family seaside cabin, just three hours north of Vancouver along British Columbia’s ironically named Sunshine Coast.
Christmas in coastal Searock epitomized charm. Historic downtown was decked up with illuminated sleighs, decorated trees in the town square, and lights adorning quaint shops: the local butcher, the elegant bistro-cafe, Rusty’s pie and home decorations, and Stone Art Gallery, frequented by tourists and featuring local and national sculptors and painters.
With every passing kilometer, Gray moved away from that charm and up into the wild BC Mountains he adored. Wafts of birch and pine brought back visceral teenage memories – of hiking these trails with Dad, making coffee on the camping stove, hungrily ripping off home-dried beef jerky with his teeth. Yet he knew that something sinister and unnatural awaited – as it always did with his job.
“It’s not my jurisdiction,” Gray said, swerving on a hairpin turn. The cliff’s edge was only a meter to the right.
“Won’t matter, James.” The doctor always called him by his last name, a habit from years of working together on the force. “Just wait and see.”
“Remind me never to invite you over for the holidays again. Why are you grinning?”
“I’ve just never seen you without your thousand dollar suit. You seem almost human.”
“Others might not agree with you.”
A few tricky turns, directed at the last minute by Seymour, brought them to their mystery destination.
No sign adorned the iron gate which autonomously opened and shut behind them. No intercom voice greeted their arrival.
The Lotus’s wheels rolled over grass and spat mud while edging through a claustrophobic, winding trail barely wide enough for the car. Branches scratched against the custom teal finish, grinding at Gray’s insides.
He gave Seymour a dark sideways glance – to which the doctor merely shrugged.
Finally, the trail ended, and they reached a dimly lit patch, flanked by an incline of trees to the left, and low-lying mist to the right. Only a single, beat-up pickup rested in this makeshift car park. Gray pulled up beside it.
The drenched ground squished and slid under his feet as though it were alive.
He pulled together the collar of his black leather jacket against the keen wind and inhaled the cold, wet air – tinged with the smell of something else...something very wrong.
Seymour stepped out of the car. He was tall but not as tall as Gray. “What do you think?”
“I think my loafers will never be the same.”
The doctor indicated towards the right, where within a clearing patch of mist, an amorphous form took the shape of a rustic cabin. Smoke spiraled upward through the crumbling brick chimney, and a back-lit silhouette paced at the paned window.
“Alright,” Gray said. “If this is the crime scene, where are the Scene of Crime Officers? I need more information before we proceed.”
“I’d rather the lady inside tell you.”
“Why the secrecy?”
“I’m not quite sure how you’ll react to the details.”
The doctor moved forward, their familiarity a balm against the storm. Although Gray mainly lived in the eye of that storm – calm, at peace – and watching the cyclone all around him with detached interest. He’d moved past loss to that sweet place where nothing that happened mattered because he had nothing left to lose.
Until recently.
“You can't solve your problems in an instant,” Seymour said, in his usual ironic tone.
“Three years isn’t an instant.”
“But you’ve just returned home to this –” he gestured with long, tapered fingers, “– wilderness of yours.”
“I hid these last three years in Montreal; licked my wounds after what I did. And I didn’t know I had a –”
“Daughter?” Seymour completed. “Must have been a shock. How do you feel?”
That was the problem. He felt as though someone had ripped apart his chest and the life he’d built while offering him a dazzling prize. But this wasn’t the time or place for this conversation. What the hell was this place?
“Did you see the tracks going up the mountain?” Gray said. “Before we turned into the gate?”
“What? No, I didn’t see anything.”
“Someone must have come out this way after this morning’s rain.”
The slamming of Seymour’s car door must have announced their arrival because a tall, young woman with almost witch-like, streaming hair ran out the front door, paused to take them both in before motioning them towards a darkened path to the right.
Sey
mour acknowledged her with a wave.
She’d moved so fast, Gray, who had since childhood categorized impressions into flavors, had only a fleeting impression of licorice (her hair), strawberries (the red lipstick on full lips), and vanilla (from her impossibly pale skin).
The woman evaporated into the murky blackness.
No introductions; no preliminaries. Only getting down to business, which suited Gray fine since all he wanted was to get back to his Dad’s cabin, put up his feet by the hearth, and have a drink – a single malt scotch to warm his chilled bones.
He scanned his smartwatch: it was just past ten.
Mud gripped his heels with each step. After about fifty feet, his nostrils screamed.
“That smell –”
“Try and ignore it,” Seymour said, walking alongside him.
Now well past the cabin, Gray hesitated before entering the pitch dark – afraid of meeting that void within himself which made it hard to move from one moment to the next, from one breath to the next. Especially, this last week of being back in his hometown – where the greatest tragedy of his life had happened. What if he stepped into that darkness and never came out? His heart slammed his ribs; breathing became a struggle. A panic he’d never known before threatened to consume him.
Gray shoved past it, arms outstretched, feet crunching over uneven ground, not knowing what lay before him, with only Seymour’s raspy breathing by his side.
“Doctor –”
“Just a little further.”
Seymour must also be feeling the claustrophobia, the perceived lack of oxygen in the saturated, dense air.
A click preceded a series of lights turning on, suddenly blinding and revealing a large rectangular patch illuminated by three oblong beams.
The woman had reached a spot adjacent to a wired fence on the far right, where a blue tarp covered the ground. It looked flat, as though covering nothing but dirt. Certainly, no dead body lay under it.
She stood against the wind, the silk hair jetting behind her, fists on hips, and legs apart. Now, Gray noticed she appeared to be of mixed heritage: part South-Asian, part Caucasian? She was also gorgeous.
“I found it here,” she said in a surprisingly melodic voice.
Thick, cold droplets touched his cheeks. The full sky was giving way, having concealed the last of the overhead stars with low-lying clouds.
Seymour introduced the woman as Dr. Emerald Kaur, who responded with a firm handshake and eyes which couldn’t quite meet Gray’s.
Accustomed to a certain response from women, Gray noticed the unshielded resentment in her eyes with interest. He didn’t mind; perhaps she distrusted all policeman.
“Sergeant Slope didn’t believe me,” she said.
“Slope’s been here?”
“Yes. Earlier today.”
Seymour had mentioned the word ‘murder’ to get Gray to come with him, but little else.
No signs identified the site, save brown individually numbered markers placed close to the ground. He opened his mouth to ask when Seymour said:
“Tell him about the corpse, Emmy.”
Emmy?
“It’s gone,” she said.
Gray had already pieced that together by SOCO’s absence. No Scene of Crime Officers likely meant the lack of a corpse. And with the local sergeant not believing “Emmy,” that implied she’d seen something no one else had.
“Am I correct in assuming that the body disappeared when you went to go for help?” Gray said.
“Of course.” She turned to Seymour. “Haven’t you told him anything?”
“I thought this would be more fun.”
Emmy sighed and began a robotic recital: “Every day at 3 pm, each body gets assessed by one of my student staff or me. Today, I noticed a change at site 144 right away – a change in color.”
“Color? I’m having difficulty following you.” This place...this peculiar place – at once familiar yet foreign, with that all-too-atrocious smell –
She pinned him with a stare a professor might reserve for a not very promising student.
“Do you live or work here?” Gray asked. “You mentioned students and a site –”
He took in the scent, the seemingly scattered debris and site markings. And suddenly, without having ever visited one before, he’d knew where he was.
“Is this a body farm?”
“We don’t call it that,” Emmy snapped.
Seymour jumped in. “She’s right; that’s an ignorant layman’s term.”
“I’m only an ignorant policeman.” Gray faced Seymour. “Why didn’t you tell me this was a forensic research facility?”
“I’m a forensic pathologist. You could have worked it out yourself. Besides, curiosity got you off that chair by the fire and out here on a cold night, didn’t it?” The doctor ran a thick-knuckled hand through his thinning hair. The caterpillar eyebrows rose a fraction and fell in conciliatory appeal. “A lot rides on you taking the case, unofficially.”
Emmy unceremoniously pushed Seymour out of the way. “If I can continue?”
“Go right ahead.”
“I found a specimen lying spread-eagled, long brown hair sprawled out in a fan, the neck bent at a peculiar angle. The bright pink underwear initially caught my attention from afar, and, of course, I didn’t reposition the corpse. I know better than to interfere with evidence.”
She painted quite a picture. Gray took in his surroundings: the rusting dilapidated car with the closed trunk; the recycling bin resting against a towering maple with branches arching on either side as though anxiously guarding the contents; the irregularly lumpy garbage bag casually strewn by the nearby fence.
Each section of this so-called body farm possessed a sequential number. He didn’t want to look too closely.
He approached site 144 with a quickened pulse and a healthy amount of dread, his new shoes squishing in the soaked, rotting earth. Wetness seeped into the stitched seams and drenching his socks.
Emmy began a recital. “We observe and record the decomposition process in various circumstances. We study and form an understanding of the decompositional changes that occur in the human body and use that research for medical, legal, and educational purposes.”
“And this,” he pointed to a manikin-like leg sticking up from the ground at site 144, part red, part glistening purple and looking impossibly bright in the relative darkness, “is forensic anthropological research?”
“From the fresh to the bloated, and finally dry stage.”
A clang sounded to the left. Seymour had moved to the nearby rusty car and stood wide-eyed looking inside the trunk. What could make the eyes of a forensic pathologist go that wide?
When Gray turned back, the glistening leg moved, and he jerked back and fell — hard, onto his behind and right onto a rock.
***
A While Before
Tomorrow, the headlines will read: The Stitcher's second victim met her doom at an isolated chalet in the woods.
I wait. I breathe, trying to hear the distant surf of British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, but it is too far away. The modern plastic chair feels hard. It’s more the clamminess inside my leather jacket and pants, and the stink from the bowl of potpourri on the coffee table which makes me want to run out into the woods screaming.
Towering chalet windows overlook the darkened front drive where amorphous trees with moving limbs sway in the keen wind. This is truly a cabin for the rich and needy with everything I love and love to hate.
Lightning sparks the sky, but in the beaded glass reflection I see startled eyes before they morph into big hollow crevices within a frightening contorted skull I scarcely recognize. For who am I? Who is this person about to undertake the most forbidden taboo of all?
My left hand trembles; I look down and steady it with the other. The insides of my leather gloves are already soaked, and I stare at the ski mask on my lap, loathe to put it on.
I don’t want to kill. I’m not a killer.
Her car pulls up with a screech, headlights bleeding into the spitting rain. I yank the itchy mask over my face and try to even my jagged breathing.
Soon, she’ll cover the path to the front door, so I grab my weapon from the table and jettison across the room to a spot just left of the double doors.
I yank at the rope, ends now tightly wrapped around both fists, suddenly both excited and repelled. Is this really me?
Sweat drips down my forehead, stings my eyes, and I blink it away. Another flash of lightning and I catch my reflection again – this time, in mirrors covering the wall to the right of the doors. Damn.
My heart slams against my ribs. With another flash, she might see me before I strike, and then what? I imagine I hear the sound of steps on the paving stones outside.
She’s coming.
I turn and whip up the carpeted stairs...her key engages the front door lock...a turning click. Rain slamming the overhead skylight is masking my rapid steps, and when the lightning inevitably flashes again, I’m upstairs on the railing.
I hazard a look down. She switches on a light which lengthens her distorted shadow directly below while her rubber-soled shoes squeak against the shiny floor.
Panicked, I turn and pin my back against the hall wall – right next to her bedroom door – just as the sound of water flowing from the kitchen tap starts and stops, followed by the clink of glass against stone.
She’s coming; she must be heading upstairs next.
I turn the knob and enter the small bedroom: I get my rope ready.
I’ve reached the point of no return or perhaps passed it, who knows? After this, I’ll never be the person I was: a good person; after this, I will be death. I wait behind the door.
It creaks open. She clicks on the light, and I am unprepared and blink.
I hesitate, and her face and shoulders turn towards me, the eyes a fraction ahead, widening at what they see. An arm moves up. Something glitters – I have to stop it – I have to stop it.
I wrap the rope around her neck and attack her from behind. She mouths the word ‘no,’ but I don’t hear it. A drum pounds in my ears to the rhythmic beat of an African tribe ritual as I yank my fists together and twist...and twist.
