Screech blinked long and slow.
“Lorena Bobbitt? Was that a joke, Drake? Did you just… oh my god, you did! You just made a funny!”
Drake flipped him the bird.
“Set it up, Screech.”
“Alright boss, will do.”
Drake had just opened his office door when Screech hollered after him.
“Oh, almost forgot: a package came for you today. Left it on your desk.”
Drake flicked the lights on in his office and was relieved when the lone bulb bled yellow light on the plain package sitting in the center of his desk.
“Any idea who it’s from?”
“Nope. No stamp on it either. Must have been hand delivered.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed as he made his way to his desk. He plopped down in his chair and then picked up the package.
Inside he felt something hard and thin, roughly eight-inches long and five inches wide. With a shrug, he opened the package and pulled out what, to him, looked like a miniature laptop sans keyboard.
He flipped the device over and read the words on the back out loud.
“E-reader: all your books in one place.”
He turned it over in his hands, trying to find some way to turn the damn thing on.
“What the hell is this?” he grumbled.
When he failed to find a single toggle or switch, he had no choice but to shout.
“Screech come give me a hand with this, would you?”
Chapter 6
Chase stepped out of her car and immediately looked around. They were an hour from Manhattan, in a rural area that she had never visited before. Her GPS told her it was technically Larchmont Village, but that was the extent of her knowledge, other than the fact that it had been at least fifteen minutes since they had passed a gas station.
Pillowy snow covered the ground in all directions, as high as a foot in some places, Chase surmised. There didn’t appear to be any fresh car tracks that couldn’t be accounted for by the police vehicles, or any discernible footprints on the road, which indicated that the killer had either walked here, or had arrived prior to the most recent snowfall.
She spotted Detective Yasiv by the side of the road, leaning against his car. When he saw her coming, he immediately straightened, moving so quickly that he spilled some of the coffee from a Styrofoam cup on his gloves.
He pretended not to notice as she approached.
“What do we have?” Chase asked, striding forward.
“One dead female, twenty to thirty years of age. Still waiting for an ID. ME hasn’t arrived yet.”
Chase frowned, knowing that her friend wouldn’t be the ME on duty.
“Where’s the body?”
Detective Yasiv pointed to a barn with a partially collapsed roof about forty yards from the road.
“In there. Tucked beneath some hay.”
Chase nodded and looked around again. The only tracks leading from the road to the barn were in a neat line that made a wide arc to the latter.
These belonged to the detectives and uniforms, she knew.
Chase moved toward these footsteps and started along their path as Yasiv fell into step beside her.
“Who owns the barn?” she asked as she made her way down the small embankment to what she suspected was a cornfield during the warmer months.
“A, uh, a Mr. Francis Dolan. Detective Simmons has gone to speak to him, but over the phone he claimed he abandoned it many years ago. He’s in his late eighties.”
Up close, the barn was in better shape than it appeared from the road. Only a few of the boards were missing on one side, and the part of the roof that had collapsed had done so in a way that maintained the integrity of the structure.
A man in his late eighties would have a hard time carrying a body down from the road, let alone doing so without leaving any tracks.
And walking forty yards in the heavy snow… in this weather…
Chase was already starting to rule out the old man as a suspect.
“Sergeant Adams,” Detective Yasiv introduced her to the two uniforms standing in front of the barn entrance.
“Gentlemen,” Chase said with a nod. They stepped aside and allowed her to enter.
If Francis Dolan had abandoned this place years ago, as he had told Detective Simmons, then it had remained in pretty good shape over that time.
The interior appeared to have been a horse barn before it fell into disuse, divided evenly into eight stalls, four on either side. Chase’s eyes went to the floor next, noting that unlike just outside the door, it was fairly dry and covered in a thick layer of hay.
“The body is in the second stall,” Yasiv said. Chase followed his finger.
Yasiv was indicating the second on the left.
As Chase made her way over to the stall, she kept her eyes on the ground, trying to identify any recent tracks, broken hay, trace evidence of any sort.
Nothing seemed out of place.
With a deep breath, Chase turned the corner and peered into the stall.
The victim was in a seated position, her legs splayed out in front of her, her back propped up against the back wall. Her hands were at her sides, palms up. Hay covered her midsection and thighs haphazardly like some sort of rough blanket.
Stiff black hair hung in front of her face, obscuring her features.
Chase strode forward.
“The body was moved here after death,” Detective Yasiv said quietly.
Chase nodded. She knew that already; the woman’s wrists were covered in slashes, wounds both old and new, but there was no blood on the hay or the walls.
Careful not to disturb any potential evidence, Chase squatted on her haunches in front of the victim. She pulled a pen from her pocket and used it to move some of the woman’s hair from her face.
The woman’s eyes were wide, her expression one of sheer terror. But it was the victim’s lips that drew, and held, Chase’s attention. They were a dirty brown, a smear that extended a sloppy inch from the corners of her mouth.
It didn’t look like lipstick to Chase.
It looked like blood.
A quick glance at the wounds on her arms and Chase realized that there was no blood on her skin at all. She had been wiped clean.
Except for her mouth.
Chase suddenly stood and turned to Detective Yasiv.
“Did you check the other stalls?” she asked quickly.
Yasiv’s smooth features contorted.
“I just got here a minute before you, I—” Yasiv, his face turning red, spun around and addressed the nearest uniform, “Officer Hewart did you check the other stalls?”
Hewart’s mouth twitched.
“Not yet, just trying to warm up first,” after noticing the stern expression on Chase’s face, he smiled a gap-toothed grin, “but we’re plenty warm now. We’ll start right away.”
Chase, still frowning, watched him go.
“Who found the body?” she asked.
“A drifter. She was looking for a place to stay, to get out of the cold,” Yasiv replied.
Chase frowned, remembering how pristine the snow had been from the road to the barn.
“No footprints?”
“I noticed that, too, and I asked her about it; she said she went around the back, through the forest. Had to walk six miles before she found someone with a phone.
Chase’s frown deepened. Like the elderly Mr. Dolan, this drifter didn’t sound like a suspect, either.
“Did you take her statement?”
Detective Yasiv nodded.
“Yes. Have her at a halfway house closer to the city, with eyes on her. If she starts to move, we’ll know.”
Chase nodded.
“Good. I don’t think—”
“Jesus Christ!”
Chase spun away from Detective Yasiv and bolted toward the corridor that divided the barn.
“What? What is it?” she asked as she hurried toward the voice.
Chase found Officer Hew
art in the last horse stall on the right. He looked up at her as she entered, fear in his eyes.
“There’s another one here,” the man almost whispered. He leaned to one side, giving Chase a clear view of another woman. Only this victim wasn’t propped up like the first; this one was almost completely buried in the hay. Most of her face was covered, including her eyes and chin, and yet Chase could see that her mouth was smeared with what she suspected was blood.
For nearly a minute, the three of them stood in silence, observing the dead.
Eventually, Chase pulled out her cell phone and started to dial.
“Who are you calling?” Detective Yasiv asked after the shock of finding a second body wore off.
Chase turned to him.
“An old friend. We’re going to need some help with this one.”
Chapter 7
The detective stared down at the body, looking into the eyes of the dead girl.
What did you see right before you died? The detective wondered. Whose face was the last that you saw?
She crouched down and teased some hay away from the woman’s face. As she did, she noticed a brown smudge across her lips.
Lipstick? Is it lipstick?
The detective leaned closer to investigate, but stood bolt upright when a police officer’s shouts echoed throughout the barn.
“We’ve got another body over here! Oh god, there’s another body!”
Drake’s phone buzzed and he stopped reading.
“Drake here,” he said, his eyes still locked on the e-reader that had been delivered to his desk.
Why the hell did someone send this crap to me?
The book, Red Smile, was the only one on the device. Preloaded, Screech had called it.
Red Smile, written by someone he had never heard of: L. Wiley.
Lost in thought, he finally realized that the person on the other end of the line hadn’t said anything yet.
“Hello?”
When there was still no answer, he pulled it away from his ear and looked at the number.
UNKNOWN.
Thinking that it was a telemarketer, he was about to hang up when the person finally spoke.
“Drake?”
Drake forgot all about Red Smile and sat up straight.
“Chase, that you?”
“Yeah, listen, I—”
“Heard about your promotion—Sergeant, huh. Who wouldathunk it. Congratulations is in order.”
“Thanks, Drake. It’s been… well, it hasn’t been the most exciting of times. I miss being in the field, mostly. Apparently, promotion is just code for ‘more paperwork’. But, hey, I don’t want to mislead you… this isn’t a social call.”
Although Drake figured as much, part of him wished that it was.
“Yeah, I thought not. What’s up?”
His thoughts turned to Doctor Kildare and his campaign manager Mary, and briefly wondered if they had seen him after all and had reported him to the NYPD. It would be unusual for such a case to travel all the way up to the Sergeant, but he knew that Chase had his back and would give him the head’s up if anything with his name attached to it popped up.
But when Chase spoke again, he realized that his suspicions were unfounded.
“You know how I just said I missed the field?”
“Yeah.”
“Well I’m back in it, and I’ve got a new case, something that I think I could use your help with. You have a few hours to spare? Think you can come aboard as a Special Consultant and help an old friend?”
Drake’s ears perked.
Special consultant?
He wasn’t sure if he was more excited about the prospect of being part of an investigation that didn’t involve old ladies or missing yachts, or just the fact that he would be reunited with Chase.
“Hell ya,” he said with more enthusiasm than he had intended. “What’ve you got?”
Chase, her voice clearly expressing relief, told him about the two bodies found in a barn on the outskirts of the city.
“Young females, mid-twenties probably. Cuts up and down their arms. Won’t know official cause of death for another hour or so. Bodies weren’t quite frozen, but it’s cold enough in the barn to mess with determining the time of death.”
“Is Beckett with you?” Drake asked.
There was an unusually long pause before Chase answered.
“No—he’s… he’s on vacation.”
The reply struck Drake as odd; for as long as he had known Beckett, the man hadn’t taken a single vacation. True, he occasionally liked to head up north to Montreal for the nightlife, but these visits were usually only weekend trips.
And it was a Tuesday morning.
“Vacation? Beckett?”
“Long story—I’ll clue you in when you get here. Oh, and Drake? One more thing: the girls, well, it looks like they have blood on their lips, like some sort of gruesome lipstick.”
Drake nearly dropped his phone.
“What?”
“Blood. On their lips. You okay?”
Drake swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the e-reader on his desk.
Coincidence; just a coincidence.
Except the last two cases he had worked on—the Butterfly Killer and Craig Sloan—had taught him that coincidences were rarely just that.
“I’m fine,” he croaked at last. “I’ll see you in an hour. Text me the address”
“Alright, but—”
Drake hung up the phone and stared at the e-reader until his eyes started to lose focus.
Coincidence?
With a shake of his head, he managed to finally tear his eyes away from the damn thing. He reached over and pulled open the top drawer of his desk a little too quickly, and the bottle of Johnny Blue knocked loudly against the wood. He watched as the golden liquid swished back and forth inside the glass.
And like the e-reader, this held his attention for an inordinate amount of time.
Get a grip. Chase needs you.
Drake reached into the drawer and grabbed the finger bone beside the bottle and jammed it into his pocket.
After closing the drawer, more carefully this time, he made his way out of the office toward Screech at the reception desk.
The man looked up at him as he neared.
“You going already? Short day there, pardner.”
Drake ignored the comment.
“I have something I need to do.” He tapped the e-reader in his hand, deep in thought. “Try to find out where this thing came from, okay?”
“I’m thinking you don’t mean the manufacturer?”
Drake grimaced.
“You sure you weren’t a detective before Triple D, too?”
Screech chuckled.
“You’re on a roll today, big fella. I’m liking this new you. Like a younger, more wrinkly Roger Dangerfield.”
“Just see if you can find out who delivered it.”
“No problemo,” the man answered, putting the worn pen in his mouth again and turning back to his computer.
Brown smudges… it had to be a coincidence, didn’t it?
Chapter 8
The teacher paced as he spoke, which annoyed Colin Elliot to no end. That, and the fact that for someone who was supposed to be teaching them how to write books that sell, Colin couldn’t find any evidence that he had actually sold anything, put him on edge.
In fact, the only information that Colin could dig up on Professor Dwight Jurgens was that he had published a shitty-looking novella that was on limited release and a book of trite poetry.
At least it didn’t cost me anything, he thought glumly. This was the eighth or ninth such ‘writer’s group’ that he had attended over as many weeks and while he always went in with high expectations, they never failed to let him down.
But that was okay. After all, he had found other means of inspiration.
“So how many of you have ever published anything? Anything at all?” Dwight asked the class. He pushed the felt-green fedora—whi
ch also irritated Colin—back from his forehead as he spoke, revealing a set of beady eyes.
As Dwight glanced around, Colin did the same. There were seven of them—there had been eight when the class started, but a young, pale man with scars on his face had left twenty minutes ago—not that much different than Colin himself: tired looking, shoulders slumped, all trying to finish a book with financial and life pressures squeezing the muse out of them.
So you want to write a book, huh?
“Nobody?” Dwight asked, his mouth twisting into a frown. “Well, I guess I’m in the wrong place then. I thought this was a writer’s group for writers.”
And then, as Colin watched, curious if this was a ruse, Dwight swept his books off the table at the front of the room and into his worn backpack. Then he walked toward the door.
Colin wasn’t sure why he spoke up—it wasn’t like him. Maybe it was the memory of his wife berating him the night before, or just the weight of the past few years bearing down.
Or maybe it was because he was changing. Deep down inside something was broken, and he didn’t know if it would ever be fixed.
Either way, he surprised himself by speaking.
“I’m published,” he said. Several of the other class members turned to stare at him, and he felt his face go red. “I have three books out.”
Dwight threw his hands in the air.
“There’s the ticket! We have at least one writer in the room,” he walked back to the table and tossed the bag on top. “I’m not really sure what you other people are doing here, but at least we have one writer. Tell me…”
“Colin.”
“Tell me, Colin. What kind of books have you written? Novels? Novellas? What Genre?”
Colin felt more heat rise in his cheeks, but now that he had started down this road, he had no choice but to continue.
“Novels, all three. Paranormal thrillers, mostly,” he shrugged. “They all have romance elements in them, as well.”
Dwight made an impressed face.
“Very nice. And?”
Colin looked around nervously.
“And what?”
“What are they called?”
“Called?” Colin asked, confused by the entire line of questioning. Part of the reason he wanted to write books in the first place was so that he could stay behind the computer screen all day.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 54