AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“From what I understand, she was severely mutilated, ma’am. Look here, here’s the number to the station house back in Atlanta.” He ripped the piece of paper out of his pad and handed it to me. “The best thing would be for you to call Detective Wilson. He’s waiting to hear from either you or me anyway. He can clear this whole thing up a whole lot better than I can.”
The sheriff was obviously a man who didn’t want such evil in his county. A couple of good ole boys driving drunk or getting in a bar brawl seemed more his speed. Even talking about murder made the hairs on his neck stand up.
I called Detective Wilson. He yanked the phone up on the first ring after I was connected to his desk. “Mrs. Reynard, I have some extremely disturbing news for you.”
Jason was sitting beside me on the couch and holding my hand while the sheriff and his deputy paced back and forth, seemingly more nervous than anyone else. “So I heard, Detective. What exactly happened to Allison, and what does this have to do with me?”
“Ms. Morton was discovered by her boyfriend a few hours ago. He went over there and used his key to gain entry when she failed to show up for a date. He found her hanging from the piping in her basement apartment.” He paused before adding, “She’d been gutted like a pig.”
“WHAT?” I started trembling, and Jason kept asking me what the detective was saying. I told him I would fill him in when I got off the phone. “Detective, that’s horrible, but her death might not have anything to do with me at all! Dempsey’s dead, remember?”
“Yes, I remember. I identified that bastard’s body at the crime scene myself.”
“So what makes you think this involves me?” I was on the edge of my seat, nervously awaiting his answer.
“Hmm, I guess you could say the writing on the wall was a dead giveaway.”
“What writing on the wall?” There was a silence on the other end of the phone. “Detective?”
“It was written in Ms. Morton’s blood on her bedroom wall.”
“What was?”
“Zoe is one dead bitch!”
chapter
thirty-five
I dropped the phone into Jason’s lap and froze in place. “Zoe, what’s wrong with you? You look as pale as a ghost!”
I wouldn’t answer him! I couldn’t answer! I was in the middle of having a fucking heart attack! “Detective Wilson, this is Jason Reynard. What happened to my secretary?”
Jason listened intently while the detective repeated everything he had just told me, adding he thought the most likely motive for the murder was gaining information about our whereabouts. Apparently, whoever killed Allison tortured her first and didn’t put her out of her misery until she told them what they wanted to know. That explained a hell of a lot and made my guilt grow ten times over. Someone was after me, and poor Allison had died because of it. She was tortured because she tried to protect Jason and me. Her death on my hands was something I would have to deal with for years to come—if I lived that long.
I was in a trance until I heard Jason, still on the phone, blurt out, “A gold earring? What about it?”
I yanked the phone out of his hand. “Detective, what about a gold earring?”
“It just seemed out of place. It was found on top of the comforter on her bed, but she wasn’t wearing the match. We couldn’t find the other one in her jewelry box or anywhere else in the apartment. It may show up after forensics goes through the place more carefully, but the way it was positioned, I figured the assailant may have lost it during a struggle.” He paused and then added, “It’s probably nothing. Just a hunch.”
I could have just asked him what type of gold earring it was, but I decided to play a hunch of my own. “ Detective, was the earring a gold cross?”
I could hear his breathing become exasperated over the phone. “How did you know it was a gold cross?” I didn’t answer him. My mind was playing back memories in my mind. “Mrs. Reynard?”
“Tyson wears a gold cross earring in his left ear!”
Unfuckenbelievable! How could everyone I ever ran across in my entire life turn out to be a loony? Dempsey, Diamond, Tyson—all fucking crazy. I began to wonder if the old saying, “You are what you attract,” was written specifically for me. Maybe I was the maniac, and all the others were just following my lead.
All that time the police had assumed Tyson had fled jurisdiction to another state to avoid doing time for his parole violation, and I figured the same. When he tried to strangle me that day in Quinton’s hallway, I figured it to be a one-shot deal, caused by a fleeting moment of anger. I had chalked the incident with him and Jason up to the same. Never in a million years would I have thought Tyson was capable of such madness.
The sheriff informed us we had two choices. There was really no place for us to go stay that side of the county line at that time of night, so we could either stay where we were and have him and his deputy keep watch outside or we could bunker down for the night at the Sheriff’s Department. I opted for the first choice, and so did Jason. No way was I trying to spend the night sleeping on a hard cot in a cell.
The two officers, who I affectionately nicknamed Andy and Barney, took up a post out in their car in front of the cabin about midnight. I refilled both of their thermoses with hot coffee, and they took turns relieving themselves in the downstairs bathroom before heading out into the cool March night air.
Jason and I took our asses to bed, and for the first time since my release from the hospital, nothing sexual happened before we drifted off to sleep. We were both stressed the hell out and worried about our kids being in a safe house that sounded like something for people in the witness protection program. I didn’t like it, any of it, and I desperately wanted it to all end. So many times I thought the shit was over, but each problem resolved seemed to bring about an even bigger one. Now Tyson was after my ass. Shame on it all!
I fell asleep thinking about the fight between Dusty and me that day in the parking lot of the garage where Tyson worked, and how she ripped the gold cross earring out of his ear, causing it to bleed, when he pulled her off me. The same earring I used to take into my mouth and suck on, along with his earlobe, while he was fucking the shit out of me in his apartment, and the same earring they had found in Allison’s apartment after he “gutted her like a pig,” to quote Detective Wilson.
