AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I want to do it again.”
“No. I won’t allow it. Sister is already worried about us.”
Sister. Worried. Allow. Madness smiled. “Do you really think Sister or you can stop me?”
“We stopped you before.”
“It had suited me to be stopped. I saw the danger around us.”
“It’s around us again!”
“We’re older. More clever. We can get away with more.”
Madness zeroed in on the image of a woman with pale white skin and long, dark hair. It had been watching her for weeks and planned to wait several months before it put her into play. Usually, just the planning, the knowing a kill was within reach, was enough. But not now. The restless energy burned with a roaring vengeance.
“Sit back and study the board. Give the game time to settle. Give the cops time to forget about the last play. Let the drama die down.”
“No.”
Reason could feel control slipping away and Madness’s desires grew stronger. “Please, wait!”
Pulsing energy tapped inside their skull. “No, I want to play again. All the loose ends on this production have been handled, so why not set up another play?”
“Not now, please!”
“Shh. It will be all right. No one will catch us,” Madness whispered. “Just one more. One more. And I will return to the shadows and leave you alone.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
Chapter Five
Wednesday, August 16, 12:21 A.M.
The phone rang fifteen minutes after Rick closed his eyes. The hope of three or four hours of shut-eye dashed, he groaned, rolled on his side, and flipped open his phone. “Morgan.”
“This is Officer McDonald. We’ve a body in an alley off Fourth Street. An overdose.”
He lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. “Why’re you calling me?”
“We found Diane Smith’s photo in his pants pocket. Written across the image was the word faithless.”
Rick sat up, energy surging through his body. “You’re sure it’s Diane Smith.”
“Saw her picture at the briefing before the shift.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stretched his neck from side to side. Skimming his hand over his short, dark hair, he rose. “I’ll be there in sixty minutes. Have you contacted Bishop?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Sure.”
He padded toward his bathroom, past a waking Tracker, and switched on the shower. He called Bishop and relayed the information. As Bishop asked Rick to repeat details, a woman’s voice sounded in the background. The voice sounded pouty, tired. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Right.”
As coffee brewed, he took a quick shower and within fifteen minutes he and Tracker were headed toward Nashville. This time of night, there was no traffic so the drive was quick. When they arrived at the alley, two squad cars blocked either end, their blue lights flashing against the building’s brick walls.
Spotting Bishop by the yellow crime-scene tape, he got out of his car, stifled a groan, and moved toward the body. The smell of death was heavy and putrid. Whoever they’d found had been here a while.
Bishop glanced up at him, nodded, and reached in his pocket for a set of black rubber gloves. Both officers donned gloves and, with the forensic tech’s approval, ducked under the tape and moved toward a dumpster. Behind the green, dented trash bin was the body, now covered with a yellow tarp.
Rick squatted, grateful his hip cooperated, and pulled back the cover. Lying facedown on the damp asphalt was a man who appeared to be in his late thirties. He had long, dark hair, a thick, muscled body, and wore tattered jeans and a black shirt. Tattoos of skulls and twisting vines snaked up each bloated arm under his shirt to his neck. Rick turned the man’s arm over and counted five needle marks. He lifted the dead man’s curled fingers. The skin had receded making the dirt-encrusted nails appear long. The skin on his face and neck were a dark blue. When the heart stopped pumping, gravity took over and drew the blood to the lowest points in the body. Called lividity, it suggesting he’d died facedown. “Where’s the photo?”
Bishop handed him a picture now sealed in a plastic bag. “Found in his right back jeans pocket.”
Rick studied the image of Diane Smith. It was a candid shot of Diane sitting in a café. The wind was blowing through her long hair and she glanced up with a wide grin that made her eyes sparkle. Scrawled in blood-red ink across the pale skin of her face was the word FAITHLESS.
He reached in the dead man’s back right pocket and pulled out a thin, worn leather wallet embossed with a skull. Inside the wallet was an expired driver’s license featuring the dead man’s frowning face. Pale and droopy-eyed, he looked half dead in the image. “His name was Jonas Tuttle, age thirty-four.”
“I’ll run the name in my computer.” Bishop raised the back of his hand to his nose. “Jesus, I can’t believe no one smelled him.”
Rick handed him the license. As Bishop returned to check the name, Rick searched more pockets. In the other back pocket he found a smashed pack of cigarettes, a handful of candy swiped from a restaurant, and a pay stub from a grocery store.
He plugged the name of the store into his phone and came up with an address that was not far from Diane’s home. A connection. Tuttle didn’t look like the kind of guy a woman like Diane would have given a second glance, but he would have noticed her. If the grocery was close to her house, she could have passed through his line, never really looking up at his face or past his clerk’s smock. He would have been invisible to her.
Bishop returned with pen in hand and his notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve an address for Jonas Tuttle.” He rattled off the address of a motel that rented on a daily and weekly basis. When Rick had worn a uniform he’d worked a prostitution sting. While a female officer had lured johns into a room rented by the cops, he and two other officers had hid in the bathroom waiting to make an arrest.
“Let’s go have a look at his room.”
After a quick drive, they pulled up at the motel, got a key from the clerk, and opened Tuttle’s room. The heavy scent of cigarettes and mold assailed them the instant they opened the door.
“This place has always reeked.” Bishop pulled rubber gloves from his pocket and put them on.
“We’ve all run a sting at this motel at one point.” He donned gloves.
Bishop shook his head as he flipped on the light. “Good times.”
The thin, reedy overhead light cast a pale gray glow over a bed of rumpled stained sheets and a dark comforter. Empty pizza boxes and beer cans littered the floor next to a pile of soiled laundry.
Rick
moved toward the bathroom and paused to open the folding doors of a closet. The instant he glanced inside he froze. The walls of the closet were papered with pictures of Diane. Diane at the grocery store. At work. Coming from the gym. Laughing with girlfriends in a café. “Have a look.”
Bishop turned from a dresser drawer and crossed to the closet. He shook his head. “Well, if that isn’t an open-and-shut case.”
Good fortune rarely was so generous. “I don’t usually get so lucky.”
Bishop rolled his head from side to side as if working out the tightness brought on by fatigue. “I suppose it happens once every so often.”
Rick studied the images so carefully cut into neat squares and so carefully glued to the wall. All the images were straight. “Guy’s a pig and he takes the time to create a neat collage of Diane?”
“This little space gave him a sense of control over Diane. He knew so much about her and she knew nothing about him. Control like that must’ve given him one hell of a thrill.”
“Judging by the images, he’s been taking pictures of her for months. Planning to kill her all along?”
Rick studied the images, which seemed to be arranged seasonally. On the far left, backgrounds featured snow and barren trees; then came trees with green buds, and then full leaves. “He started taking pictures in the winter and he’s followed her all the way through spring and half of summer. The winter pictures are distant. He didn’t have the nerve to get too close. It’s almost as if he was afraid to take the first pictures.”
Bishop nodded. “But he got progressively closer and closer. By spring he’s within feet of her.”
Rick moved to the dresser drawers and dug through them until he found several very small cameras. He held them up. “You don’t find these at the local store.”
Bishop took one of the small cameras in his hands. “They’re also expensive.”
“Say he crosses paths with Diane at the grocery store where he worked. She passed through his line. Or smiled or glanced his way while he was unloading a truck or ringing a register. He decided she’s really into him. He starts paying more and more attention to her when she comes into the store. Can’t stop thinking about her. He begins stalking. Realizes he doesn’t have the means to get a woman like her, and he gets angry over his lack of control.”
