Sky Like Bone: a serial killer thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  “Luisa, can I ask you something?” said Wren.

  “Paul wants to explain it all himself,” said Luisa. “I know how hard it can be waiting, but it’s a character-building exercise. It’s a lesson in patience.”

  “Right,” said Wren, “patience. But, um, you came here with a man named Gerald? Evans?”

  Luisa drew back. “H-how do you know that?”

  “What happened to him?” said Wren.

  “I’m going to talk to Paul about this,” said Luisa.

  “Don’t,” said Wren. “Uh, don’t say anything to Paul. I recognized your name from a Missing Persons report, that’s all, and it freaked me out.”

  “Really?” said Luisa. “Who thinks we’re missing? I didn’t think anyone cared. We’re not missing, we’re here.”

  “Both of you?” said Wren.

  “I’m not really supposed to be talking to you,” said Luisa, and left the room.

  “Well, that went well,” said Reilly.

  Wren rubbed her forehead. “I fucked up, didn’t I?”

  They waited, thinking that Watkins would show up, that their door would be bolted closed, that something would happen.

  But nothing happened.

  And the minutes ticked by slowly.

  When it was nearly midnight, they decided it was late enough to go exploring.

  They eased their way out of their room into the dark hallway.

  The door to the other bedroom up here was closed. No light came out from beneath.

  Carefully, slowly, Reilly went to the door and turned the door knob.

  They waited, but no one on the other side of the door reacted. Maybe no one was in there.

  Reilly opened the door a crack.

  They both peered through to see that two people—a man and a woman—were sleeping in the bed. They couldn’t make out anything about the people, not in the darkness, however.

  Silently, Reilly pulled the door shut again.

  They went downstairs.

  The downstairs contained a kitchen, a dining room with a table with eight chairs, a living room, an office with desks and filing cabinets, and a half-bath.

  They descended down another level, which was the basement of the house, and there they found several more rooms, each with people sleeping in the rooms.

  Wren couldn’t be sure, but it was beginning to seem as if Watkins wasn’t killing the men after all. She’d actually predicted this scenario, she realized. She’d told Krieger that if the people were staying here of their own free will, there wasn’t much that could be done.

  They needed to prove coercion.

  She pulled Reilly close, whispering to him. “When we talk to him tomorrow, we have to try to leave, try to push back. We have to get him to be forceful with us, or we’re going to have nothing to nail him with.”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “Because it doesn’t look like he’s killing them.”

  “No,” she said. “It really doesn’t.”

  “Okay, but here’s the weird thing,” said Reilly. “This house had three stories, didn’t it?”

  Wren straightened. “You’re right. We couldn’t see this basement level from outside. There’s another story on top of us. But how do we get there?”

  They went back up the steps to the level with the kitchen. There were no other steps besides the ones they’d used, and there definitely weren’t steps on their level, not unless they were in the other bedroom. They hadn’t explored that room well enough.

  “I think I remember seeing steps outside,” said Reilly.

  “Did you?”

  “Let’s go check,” he said.

  They went out the front door, which opened onto a small porch. There were stone steps down to the ground.

  They walked around the house, and there—sure enough—were a set of steps that led upstairs to the very top story of the house, where there was a small landing are and another door.

  But the windows up there glowed. Someone on that level was awake.

  “We can’t go up there,” said Wren.

  Suddenly, the door in front of the landing opened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  REILLY yanked on Wren, pulling her with him.

  They collided with the side of the house. They were beneath the stairs that ascended to the top of the house.

  They flattened themselves there in the shadows. Wren tried not to breathe. It seemed that breathing too loudly would give them away.

  They waited.

  Long moments passed, and then they heard the door above them shut.

  Wren let out a noisy breath.

  A heavy footfall on the top step.

  Someone was coming down the steps.

  Wren held her breath again and did her best not to move. Maybe if they were totally still, then no one would know they were there.

  Watkins descended the steps, taking his time, looking all around. When he got to the bottom, he peered in between the slats of the steps. “Well, well, well, what are you two doing out of bed?”

  Shit.

  He sighed heavily. “I looked into it, actually. Just now. Found Missing Persons reports on all the couples I got staying here. I don’t know how that happened, to be honest. Weird thing is that all of those reports originate within the past six months. And Tristan and Francesca have been here longer than that.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you two tell me who you really are?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WREN let out a high-pitched laugh. “What do you mean? We told you who we were.”

  “I should have figured it when you spent all that time asking me questions about the occult books,” said Watkins, walking around the steps so that he could face them without anything between them.

  “Let’s just calm down, Paul,” said Reilly, holding up a hand.

  “Who’s not calm?” said Watkins.

  Me, thought Wren. Very much not calm.

  “Let me lay it out for you,” said Watkins. “Here’s what I think. You somehow found out that Love Over Want was affiliated with the Order of the West Temple, and you let your prejudice inform your decisions. You went looking for problems, and you found them. Then you reported people as missing, people who you’d never met. But when nothing happened from that, you felt the need to come here and try to insert yourself into the situation. I’m not sure how Clive works into it. Maybe he recruited you to help him. He did get here about six months ago.”

  Wren glanced at Reilly. What should they do? He hadn’t seemed to make the leap that they were law enforcement yet, and she didn’t want him to do that. That might make him more likely to hurt them.

  “Wow,” she said. “You really figured that out.”

  “Wasn’t hard,” said Watkins. “Look, I’m not hurting anyone.”

  “Well, why do you have four couples living at your house, then?” said Reilly.

  “Yeah, and why are at least two of the women pregnant?” said Wren.

  “Why’d you ask us all those weird questions about whether or not we wanted to have kids?” said Reilly.

  “I can explain everything,” said Watkins. “But why don’t you come inside? My apartment’s upstairs.”

  Wren and Reilly exchanged another glance.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” said Watkins, exasperated. “You know, we don’t worship the devil or anything like that. We’re just a spiritual group. We’re not dangerous.”

  “Fine, we’ll go upstairs with you,” said Reilly.

  “Great,” said Watkins. He turned on his heel and began climbing the steps.

  They went after him.

  Upstairs, his apartment was spacious and tastefully decorated, like the rest of the place. He led them into a living room and gestured for them to sit on a leather sofa.

  They sat.

  He sat opposite them in a matching chair. He made a tent with his fingers and rested it against his bottom lip. “Okay, I don’t understand. You’ve put in a lot of effort for this. Don’t you have jobs? Li
ves?”

  “We’re, um… journalists,” said Wren, in a burst of inspiration.

  “Yeah, along with Clive,” said Reilly. “We’re working on a story about this.”

  Watkins sank back in his chair. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s the last thing I need.”

  “Well, we can tell your story,” said Wren. “Get your side.”

  “So, if you’re journalists, why did you alert the police about the missing people?”

  “We, um, didn’t,” said Reilly.

  “Yeah, that wasn’t us,” said Wren. “Must be a coincidence. So, if no one’s getting hurt, what is going on?”

  “What if I want this to be off the record?”

  “We could protect your anonymity,” said Reilly. “Change all the names to protect the innocent. Keep the location out of it.”

  “You’d do that?” said Watkins.

  “As long as you’re not really hurting anyone,” said Wren.

  “I’m not!” Watkins protested. “Everyone who is here is here of their own free will. And when everything is done, after the babies are born, I buy them houses and give them a year’s salary, and let them get started living their lives.”

  Wren looked around. This house was a nice house, and there was a lot of room in it, but who had money to just buy people houses? “You expect us to believe you can just up and buy a house for other people?”

  “Oh, money’s not an issue,” said Watkins. “My family is old money, blue blood money. All I’ve ever wanted to do was good with what I’d inherited. But it’s so hard to know what is good and what isn’t. When you’ve got a lot of money, there are always people trying to get it from you, and they’re all saying that it’s for a good cause.” He leaned forward. “You might not understand this, but there’s a lot of guilt associated with being born rich. I never asked for it, you know. For a long time, I was on a quest to prove to myself, somehow, that I was worthy of all my wealth.”

  “So, you do that by sheltering pregnant women?” said Wren.

  “No, that came later,” said Watkins. “I stumbled on the Order of the West Temple on my own. They never came to me, trying to get me to be part of their ranks. No, I discovered them myself, and through meditation, I had an epiphany. That was this—there was no worth. I could never deserve what I had. The world didn’t work that way. Things were, whether or not they were fair and equitable. Everything became very clear to me, and I had an… experience. A very strange experience that was also physical. I could feel my body changing on a molecular level.”

  “Wow,” said Reilly, and Wren was amazed that he didn’t sound sarcastic at all. “That’s mindblowing.

  “Right?” said Watkins. “Anyway, this change that had taken hold in me, it was deep in my cells. It had changed me on a genetic level. It had rewritten my DNA. And I knew that if I were to pass this on to another generation that my children would be changed as I was. They would be better, a new race of supermen and superwomen.”

  “Wow,” Reilly said again.

  Wren was trying very hard not to snicker.

  “I know.” He laughed. “It sounds nuts. So, it’s not what I offer to the people who come here. If I hadn’t figured out who you were, tomorrow morning, I would not be starting with this. Instead, I would be telling you that you would stay here through Wren’s pregnancy, to be given special treatments to ensure that the child would be born healthy and strong. And that then, when we were done, you’d be given a new house and $70,000. That your reset of your life that you’d been looking for was here. And I’d be telling you that it would be better for Wren to bear a child that carried my DNA, since you, Cai, already knew that your genetic material was defective.”

  “So, you’re paying couples to fuck the woman,” said Reilly in a low voice.

  “No, no.” He waved both of his hands in the air. “Absolutely not. Uh, turkey baster method all the way. Definitely none of that. And it is effective. We have been successful first try with all the women here, because we track basal body temperature and determine when ovulation happens. It’s all scientific and clinical. There’s no… nothing sexual about it. At all. I promise.”

  Now, Wren leaned forward. “Nothing sexual?”

  “No,” said Watkins.

  Reilly snorted.

  Wren snorted.

  “What’s that about?”

  “Oh, come on, it’s always sexual,” said Wren.

  “No,” insisted Watkins.

  Reilly turned to her. “Well, he’s not killing them, Wren,” he said in a low voice.

  “True,” she said. “This is something entirely different than anything we’ve ever investigated.”

  “It’s maybe not even illegal.”

  “You know,” she said, “I don’t think it is.”

  “Of course it’s not illegal,” said Watkins.

  “We’re just supposed to take your word on this?” said Wren. “How do we know that there are houses and payments of all that money?”

  “Well, I can show my bank accounts,” said Watkins. “I can ask the couples that I’ve worked with if they’ll talk to you, but I don’t know if they want to speak to the press.”

  Wren wasn’t sure if they should break cover at this point or not. But it probably wasn’t wise, not if there was a chance that Watkins was lying, and there was.

  She and Reilly needed to get out of there, and then they could determine their next move.

  “Fine,” she said. “Well, you get in touch with them, and then we’ll go from there. But until then, Cai and I are going to call a Lyft, and we’re going to get out of here.”

  “No, no,” said Watkins. “It’s late. Stay here tonight. I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. We’re friendly people. We really are, and I want you to have a good impression of us. You know, maybe I’m wrong about my DNA, but couples who are here couldn’t afford to have children any other way, and they’re happy. They’re on their way to a better life. So, really, even if it seems strange, what is the harm?”

  Wren wasn’t sure. It might not be safe to stay. On the other hand, if they could talk to the people here, ask questions, they might get some more information.

  She pointed at him. “If we don’t get back in touch with our contact, there will be consequences.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you!” Watkins threw up his hands.

  “We’ll stay for breakfast,” she said. “And you’ll let us talk to everyone in the house.”

  “Of course,” said Watkins. “Of course, you can talk to anyone you please. But it’s up to them if they want to answer personal questions.”

  THERE was bacon, and it had been a long time since Wren had been able to eat bacon after a slew of vegetarian breakfasts. She tried not to be distracted by deliciousness as she spoke to Francesca Crawford, who was sitting next to her.

  “So, Paul, does he have a lot of rules for this place?”

  “No, not really,” she said.

  “But you don’t go anywhere,” said Wren. “Or else, people wouldn’t have filed Missing Persons reports on you and your husband. Are you allowed to leave?”

  “We leave,” said Francesca. She considered. “Well, maybe not so much. The truth is that we don’t have anywhere to go. But people do leave. When we got here, there was another couple here, Jim and Anna, and they were in and out all the time, going to see Jim’s family every other week or so. If Tristan and I had family like that, we’d go visit them too. But there’s a reason we ended up in such a bad place in the first place.”

  “You didn’t have any family to take care of you,” said Wren. “You didn’t tell anyone you were going here because there was no one to tell.”

  “Exactly,” said Francesca, rubbing her swollen belly.

  “And Paul, he claims he didn’t impregnate you in person,” said Wren. “That he, um, didn’t, you know, have intercourse with you.”

  “Of course not,” said Francesca. “That would just be weird. Gross. Who would sign up for that?”
>
  “Right,” said Wren. But people in cults, brainwashed people, lied all the time. They were coached on how to lie. However, even if Watkins had a harem of women who he was having sex with, then that in and of itself wasn’t really a problem. “Can you tell me Jim’s last name or Anna’s last name?”

  “Well, I don’t want to disrespect their privacy,” she said.

  That was convenient.

  However, Wren did have to admit that it could be that there were other couples who’d gone through this who might not have appeared to be missing because they were coming and going freely. But most of the people at Love Over Want had no way to come and go freely. They didn’t have cars. They didn’t have money. They would be entirely depended on Watkins.

  Who she thought was a wacko, for the record.

  He was taking advantage of people, and he had a god complex, and he seemed like prime cult leader potential. However, in terms of crime, there wasn’t a lot here so far.

  They were going to have to dig deeper if they wanted to find something actionable.

  KRIEGER yanked both Wren and Reilly into his hotel room. “Oh, my God, you two, I didn’t know if you were dead or not.”

  “Shit,” said Reilly. “Sorry. We should have texted you.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t even take our phones,” said Wren.

  “And now you’re back,” said Krieger.

  “You’re going to want to sit down for this,” said Reilly.

  Krieger’s bed was not made. He turned to it and threw the covers up haphazardly and then sat on the bed. He waited expectantly.

  Wren looked at Reilly. Where the hell to start?

  “So, these missing people, they’re not dead,” said Reilly.

  “They’re at his house,” said Wren. “Carrying babies made with his super sperm.”

  Krieger looked back and forth between them. “Come again?”

  They explained the situation to Krieger, telling him everything that they had discovered while they were there.

  Krieger got up at one point and went to the other side of the room to dig a pad of paper and pen out of his briefcase. He began scribbling as Reilly talked.