by Chris Culver
Contents
Half-title
Copyright
Title
Other novels
Dedication
Deliberately Blank Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
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About the Author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Chris Culver
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [email protected]
First paperback edition April 2019
First eBook edition April 2019
www.indiecrime.com
Facebook.com/ChrisCulverBooks
A Joe Court Novel
BY
CHRIS CULVER
ST. LOUIS, MO
Other books by Chris Culver
Joe Court Novels:
The Girl in the Motel
The Girl in the Woods
Ash Rashid novels:
The Abbey
The Outsider
By Any Means
Measureless Night
Pocketful of God
No Room for Good Men
Sleeper Cell
Gabe Ward Novels
Counting Room
Stand-alone novels:
Just Run
Nine Years Gone
To my readers. Thank you.
1
Paige had ivory skin still unblemished by time, brunette hair that flowed down to her shoulders, and the long, muscular legs of a dancer. Her eyes were her only flaw. Hazy and vapid, they belied the sharp mind that lay within. In his younger years, Glenn would have made a fool out of himself to impress her. Now, that was no longer an issue.
He slipped the mask over his face and sauntered down the concrete steps. With the first couple, he hadn’t worn a mask. Unfortunately, they had watched enough television to know what that meant. Despite his best efforts, he had never been able to develop a rapport with them, because they knew a man who let them see his face would never let them go. Ever since then, he had worn a replica of a seventeenth-century plague doctor’s mask. Its long, pointed beak drew and held the sinners’ attention until the end.
Grit crunched beneath his shoes as he descended into the gloom. Helen followed a few steps behind him. Though she was capable of many things, Helen hated manual labor, leaving Glenn to carry the cattle prod and cooler himself. When he reached the bottom step, he put both items down and flicked on the light switch.
Paige and Jude shielded their eyes but otherwise didn’t move from their cot. The room was a simple storm cellar divided in half by a heavy-duty chain-link fence. A light bulb hung on a long chain in the center of the room. The air was damp and held a whiff of mold. Glenn had tried to make the space comfortable by putting in a cot, mattress, and pillows, but he couldn’t mask its nature.
Nor did he want to.
“Good morning,” whispered Glenn. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
On previous visits, Jude had jumped out of bed and run to the fence as soon as Glenn and Helen stepped inside. Some days he had begged for Glenn to let him out, while other days he had threatened and screamed at the top of his lungs. Now, he didn’t even look up. Paige drew in a breath but didn’t otherwise move.
“It’s time,” said Helen. “They’re ready to give in.”
“I think you’re right,” said Glenn, glancing over his shoulder at his sister.
She wore a blue pencil dress with a cream-colored bow around her waist and a matching blue masquerade mask. A red hair tie pulled her straight, brunette hair from her face. Though her outfit and simple makeup, made her look like a lawyer or accountant, Helen didn’t have a job. She lived with him, and he provided for them both. She needed little, so Glenn didn’t mind. He loved his sister, but more than that, she had helped raise him after their mother died. She had earned her place in his home.
“Who are you talking to?” asked Jude, his voice scratchy.
“My sister,” said Glenn. “You’ve met her before.”
“There’s no one there,” said Paige, her voice wavering as she sat upright. “There’s never anybody else there.”
Glenn looked at his sister again. She had disappeared into the shadows. Helen was a beautiful woman, but she felt insecure at times. Their mother had died when they were young, so no one had taught Helen to put on makeup or to dress for her body type. She had to learn that all on her own, and she still didn’t always like the results she achieved. Glenn tried to tell her she looked beautiful and had nothing to be ashamed of, but Helen preferred to stay in the shadows when others were around. She didn’t like it when people looked at her. That was her choice, and he respected it.
“You don’t need to see her,” said Glenn, turning to his two young captives. “How are you two lovebirds feeling? Hungry?”
Neither Jude nor Paige said anything. Jude’s skin, like Paige’s, had grown paler in the past few weeks, but the most visible change had been to his cheeks. They had grown hollow and more pronounced. Even on his best day, no one would have ever called him handsome, but after weeks surviving on scraps of food, he now looked gaunt, almost ghoulish.
Jude and Paige were the sixth couple he and Helen had taken. This was his life’s work, the highest, noblest thing he had ever done. It was the only way to right the sins of his past. His sister had taught him that. If he lived to a hundred, he could never thank her enough.
“I have something for you,” said Glenn, reaching into the small cooler he had brought with him. He pulled out a Ziploc bag containing half a ham sandwich. It wasn’t much, just a piece of processed meat between two pieces of cheap white bread. It didn’t even have mayonnaise on it. Jude sat up and stared as if he had taken out the most delectable cut of meat in the world. Though Glenn gave his captives as much water as they could want, both had lost a significant amount of weight, and they moved slowly. They were weak.
“Will you stay on the bed if I open the door?” he asked. Both nodded, so Glenn walked to the cell’s gate and unlocked the padlock. Four weeks ago, he wouldn’t have done that. Now, they’d be weak enough to do as they were told. Still, he picked up his cattle prod in case Jude tried to play hero.
“The sandwich is fo
r Jude,” said Glenn, holding out the bag. “I’ve got another half in the cooler.”
Jude hesitated and then looked to his girlfriend.
“What does Paige get?”
“The sandwich is for you,” said Glenn, allowing a gentle smile to form on his lips. “I suppose you can do with it whatever you want. You’ve got to be hungry.”
Jude licked his lips and stood. Only then did Glenn see the way Jude’s shirt hung off his once athletic shoulders and the way the bones of his wrist protruded beneath his skin. Some people could survive months on a starvation diet as long as they had enough water, but neither Paige nor Jude had come in with excess body fat. Unless they ate soon, he doubted they’d have much time left.
Jude snatched the bag from Glenn’s hand as if he feared it would disappear at any moment. Then he smiled as tears formed in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he said, opening the bag and sitting beside his girlfriend. Paige never took her eyes from the small bit of food in front of her. Glenn watched and prayed, hoping today would be the day. Jude took the sandwich from the bag, tore it in half, and held a part toward Paige. She cried tears of joy, but Glenn’s shoulders slumped. He sighed and lifted his cattle prod before either took a bite.
It was too early.
He shocked Jude first. Paige yelped and dropped her food as she scurried away, but Jude tried to shove the sandwich into his mouth. Glenn kicked him in the face so he couldn’t. Then he shocked him again, this time holding the prod against his neck until Jude’s body convulsed on the ground.
Glenn grabbed the remnants of the sandwich from the cot and stabbed Paige in the gut with his cattle prod to remind her how much it hurt. She screamed and curled into a ball. Neither fought back. They had learned the consequences of fighting with him weeks ago.
Glenn hurried out of the cell, swearing nonstop under his breath as he locked the gate. Then he threw the sandwich down and gripped the chain-link fence. He trembled with rage and frustration, and he screamed an animalistic scream. Paige and Jude looked at him as if he were the crazy one, as if he had turned down the sandwich. He wasn’t crazy, though. He was just pissed.
“Calm down, Glenn,” said Helen. “They’re not ready yet, but they will be.”
“I’m tired of waiting,” he said. The kids both wailed louder at hearing his voice, so he glared at them and snarled. “Shut up.”
Paige and Jude held each other on the bed. They quieted down, and Glenn took two deep breaths.
“He loves her and thinks he needs to take care of her,” said Helen in her soothing, singsong voice. “It always takes time, and you always get impatient at the end.”
“Simon and Jordan took four weeks. Andrew and Nicole took five. No one has taken over six. Something is wrong. They’re sneaking food somehow.”
Helen shushed him and then left the shadows to put her arm over his shoulder as she led him out of the cellar.
“Did you see them? They don’t have secret supplies of food. They’re starving,” she said. “Every couple is different. This one is stronger than most, but we haven’t failed yet. We won’t fail now. Have patience. We’re closer than you think.”
He knew his sister was right, but the need still burned inside him.
“What do we do?” he asked, after drawing in a deep breath.
“First, you turn off the light,” she said. “If we leave them in darkness, they’ll break faster. Second, we go to Winfield. There’s no reason we can’t handle two at once.”
He flicked off the light.
“Don’t leave us!”
The voice was so panic-stricken, Glenn couldn’t even tell whether it was Paige or Jude. He turned and screamed over his shoulder.
“Shut up!”
The voices quieted, and Helen rubbed his shoulder. As they climbed the steps, he came back to his senses. She was right. Three more days—a week at most—and Jude and Paige would give in to their animal natures. They simply needed more seasoning.
He and Helen left the cellar and emerged into a beautiful, early summer morning. Birds chirped in the trees, and insects buzzed around the wildflowers at the edge of the clearing. A rabbit darted from the abandoned building behind him.
“You sure we should go to Winfield?” he asked, pulling the cellar door shut to the protests of the people inside. He locked that with another padlock and walked to his car. Helen kept pace over the uneven ground despite the high-heeled shoes she wore.
“Hunting would do us both good,” she said. “It would take our minds off things.”
Glenn had driven a black Kia that morning. At one time, the car had belonged to John Rodgers of Hannibal, Illinois, but with John’s death many months ago, it now belonged to him and served a purpose far higher than ferrying a teenager to and from school. Glenn never drove his own car to the dungeon. That would have been foolish. Upon reaching the vehicle, he put the cooler and cattle prod on the ground and opened his trunk. He hadn’t gone hunting in almost six weeks. He missed the rush.
“Let’s pick up Peter and Mary, then. If they take six weeks to break, we might as well start now.”
2
I got to my station at a few minutes before eight in the morning. My stomach had butterflies, my mouth was dry, and my fingers couldn’t stop drumming the steering wheel of my old Dodge pickup. I had spoken during the morning briefing dozens of times in the past year alone, but today was special. Today, we had guests from the FBI.
Since the station’s lot was full, I parked on the street about half a block away and hurried toward my building. St. Augustine wasn’t a wealthy county, so we didn’t have the newest equipment or fancy squad cars, and we could have doubled the number of uniformed officers on staff and still been shorthanded. Nobody complained about our headquarters building, though.
At one time, it had been a Masonic temple, but the county had purchased it when the Masons left town. Most of it needed renovation, but it was a gorgeous building. The county promised to remodel the second and third floors eventually and give us a modern forensics lab and enough private offices for each detective in the department to have his own place, but I knew how government worked and wasn’t hopeful that would happen in my lifetime. Still, I appreciated what we had.
I opened the heavy oak front door and walked inside. Trisha Marshall, the day shift’s dispatcher, sat behind the front desk. She nodded at me.
“You’re late, Joe,” she said, smiling. “The boss is in the conference room. You’d better hurry.”
“On my way,” I said, knocking on her wooden desktop as I passed. When the Masons built their temple, they had put an auditorium with three hundred seats in the middle of the building. Upon purchasing the property, the county pulled out the seats and the stage and put in cubicles. It was now our bullpen, a purpose it served well.
I walked through the maze of desks to the conference room. A dozen uniformed officers had gathered around the open door to listen to that morning’s briefing. It was two minutes before eight, but already Sheriff George Delgado’s voice carried outside as he read the previous evening’s arrest reports.
I whispered apologies as I slipped through the crowd. The boss’s eyes lingered on me once he saw me. My ego wasn’t big enough for me to believe he had started early to make me look bad, but he seemed to enjoy glaring at me all the same.
I mouthed an apology, but Delgado rolled his eyes and looked away. Half a dozen unfamiliar men in suits sat around the conference table. All of them looked bored. In addition, someone had wheeled in whiteboards and tacked maps of the local area to the wall.
When he finished the daily briefing, Delgado looked around the room and drew in a deep breath.
“I know most of you hoped for an update on Paige Maxwell and Jude Lewis. You won’t get one.”
Several uniformed officers grumbled, but we needed secrecy on a case like this. I trusted my colleagues, but the more people who knew about the case, the greater the chance we’d spring a leak. The local community was on edge alread
y; we didn’t need to push them into a panic.
“This isn’t a democracy, so you can stop bitching now,” said Delgado. “If you’ve got an assignment, go to it. If you don’t, go home.”
The room emptied. The crowd almost carried me out, too, but I slipped past my colleagues so I could stand near the head of the conference room table. An unfamiliar man stood and held his hand toward me.
“Bruce Lawson,” he said. “I’m the special agent in charge of the Bureau’s field office in St. Louis. I’m heading up the task force. You must be Detective Court.”
I shook his hand and nodded. Lawson was in his early fifties, and he had neat brown hair and a clean-shaven face. A navy-blue suit coat and white shirt hugged his torso. His long, thin fingers wrapped around my knuckles as I shook his hand. Despite the massive size of his hands, he was only an inch or two taller than me, so most of his agents towered over him.
“I’m Joe. Nice to meet you, Agent Lawson.”
“From the reports I’ve read, you did good work on this. I look forward to hearing this in your own words,” he said, nodding toward the head of the table. “Have a seat, and we’ll get started.”
The butterflies fluttered in my gut once more. After my colleagues had left, Delgado closed the door and walked to the table.
“This is your show, Bruce,” he said, pulling out a chair. “Floor is yours.”
Agent Lawson flashed him a tight smile.
“First things first, thank you for letting my team camp out in your station, Sheriff Delgado,” he said, looking to the sheriff and then to the other men around the table. “We’re here because the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit believes we have a serial murderer in the region. Before we start, let me clarify that we wouldn’t be here at all if it hadn’t been for the work of Detective Joe Court.”