Hunting Gorgeous: A Romantic Suspense

by B. B. Hamel

  We trudged together to the back gate and walked out onto the towpath. He turned right and led on. Other people were out for morning strolls, a gaggle of local older women, a few isolated joggers, an older man in wide-legged blue jeans who smiled and waved. About ten minutes along, we found an old wooden bridge, and Nick crossed first. At its apex, I looked over the railing and down into the water, and that fantasy came back to me again, if only brief—my body down in the middle of the canal.

  On the other side, a road ran parallel. We crossed and Nick found a hiking trail that wound up into the trees. We took it, Nick leading the way. I kept my head down, watching for roots. The path was barely more than a dragged dirt line between the underbrush. The air was humid, heavy and thick, and the water practically dripped off the leaves.

  “Not much out here,” Nick said. “River’s nearby though.”

  “How far from town are we now?”

  “Not sure.” He squinted back the way we’d come. “Can’t see the road anymore.”

  “Can’t hear cars. We’ve been walking for almost an hour.”

  He nodded, frowning. “But we haven’t found tires yet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Come on then.” He pushed forward, and I saw his hand drift to something tucked into his waistband—the gun, ready for his fingers to squeeze the trigger.

  The forest was dense around us. I smelled the canal still nearby: old mud and rotting plant matter. I wanted turn back but I knew this was too important to stop. I kept my eyes on Nick instead of obsessing about where CGK might be. I thought of Nick’s hand on my hips, his lips against my neck, his words whispered in my ear, and I pushed away the nagging doubts, the insecurity, the worries and failures and worse. I tried not to let the woods play tricks on me, and rushed onward.

  We came up over a hill, and the path turned sharply, until we reached a fork after ducking under a series of low branches. There piled in the center of the fork were several old tires, one of which had been painted red, the paint chipped and flaked from age. I stood staring at it as Nick approached, circling the stack like it were some ancient totem, before he shook his head. “Just tires,” he said.

  “Come on.” I turned right, following CGK’s directions. “We better be close.”

  Nick followed, saying nothing. The path was barely more than a trail between two thick sets of plants on either side. Sticker bushes and brambles caught on my jeans and my sweater. I brushed them aside, held tree limbs, climbed over a downed log, until ahead, looming up between several ancient-looking oaks, was a small log shack covered in ivy and climbing creeper. Chicory grew all around its edge in bright purple bloom. It looked like the entrance to a forgotten jungle lair, the old haunt of a long-dead tribe.

  “Wait here,” Nick said, taking lead. “I’ll check it out.”

  “You think this is where he’s taking us?”

  “Has to be.” He looked around. “There’s nothing else. Path ends here.”

  I watched him go. He moved around the perimeter of the shed, kicking as its foundations. When he disappeared around the back, I wanted to go after him or to shout his name, if only to make sure that he was okay—and so he’d know I was still alive. Nothing moved around me and the stillness bothered me the most. There should’ve been chirping birds, the buzz of insects, flies zooming around my face.

  Instead, nothing. Only silence.

  He came back around and shook his head. “Looks abandoned,” he said. “There’s a window around the other side. Glass broken out.” He walked to the door, half-fallen off its hinges, and kicked it.

  The wood splintered and fell inward with a rush. I jumped back and brought my hands to my face, stifling a scream. He stepped into the shed then beckoned me to follow.

  Inside smelled like the bottom of a crawlspace. The wood was dark and damp. It was dim, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. Objects were scattered all over: broken beer bottles, soda cans, bloated magazines, chip bags, empty condom wrappers, syringes, a spoon. There were small plastic crates set up in a circle, and a black scorched section surrounded by rocks suggested this place was used as a drug den, and probably recently—and they’d been stupid enough to light a fire inside. I imagined slimy rats dragging their bellies among the vegetation.

  “Look at this.” Nick stood by the far wall, peering at something tacked up there. I walked over, stepping high over the refuse, and stood next to him.

  Pictures of girls covered the wood. Most of them were faded and decomposed to nothing, though some still remained. They looked like magazine cutouts. All of them were women, all were pretty, and they were arranged in a wild, unruly pattern. Naked playing cards were lined up in a row toward the bottom.

  “What is this?” I asked, feeling a chill.

  “I don’t know,” he said. The pictures continued all along the back wall, followed by small objects nailed next to them: a hairband, a pair of old panties turned brown with age, what looked like a retainer, twisted and rusty. There were other nail spots, but most of the things had been taken down. Some graffiti was added at a later date, most of it written in sharpie: PAUL FUCKED HERE marked next to WHEN SHIT HITS THE FAN, HIT BACK.

  “It’s like a shrine,” I said, staring at the girls and the objects. “Like someone came here and put this all together. I think some of this stuff came later, but the pictures and the cards and these things—they look older.”

  “I think you’re right.” Nick kept walking along the wall, reading the graffiti, studying the pictures, until he stopped and reached forward, picking a piece of paper off the ground.

  It was too white and new to belong to everything else. He unfolded it slowly, and I had the sudden urge to tell him to stop. I didn’t want to know what was written there and I didn’t want to know what this place used to be. I saw the magazine pictures, and the objects that looked stolen from teenage girls, and I wanted to run, wanted to forget that we were ever in this hellish place, because if hell was somewhere, it was right here, in this room, in this shack where evil was born.

  “It’s from him,” Nick said. His voice sounded too loud, though he spoke barely above a whisper.

  “Read it to me. I can’t look.” I turned away, staring at the open door, reminding myself that it was there. I felt like I might be sick any moment.

  “Lovelies, welcome to my old home. I grew up around here, did you know? No, you didn’t know, of course not. This little Shangri-La wasn’t so bad once when I was a boy. It was my clubhouse in the forest, did you know? My heaven on earth. Do you see my treasures? Still here, after all this time. Lovelies, I’m so happy you got to see where I learned how to love. I’ll see you soon. We can be together. Love, me.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “He killed in here.”

  “He might have.” Nick carefully folded the page and shove it into his pocket. “Or maybe it was where he realized he wanted to kill. Where he learned to do it.”

  “We have to do something. There might be bodies under these floorboards.” I stared at him wildly and barely kept myself from running.

  “I’ll call it in,” he said.

  “Will it scare him away?”

  “I don’t know. He had to have wanted us to see it. He would’ve known how we’d react.”

  “Can forensics find anything here, anyway?”

  “Maybe, might get DNA on some of that stuff. We’ll find out.” He took out his phone.

  “Wait.” I reached out and held his wrist. “Are you sure? We can’t risk losing him, not now.” I felt a sudden rush of anger push away the nausea. All these pictures, and all those little mementos, the young CGK must have been a monster. He might’ve tortured girls out here, young girls that didn’t deserve it, all for his sick pleasure. And even if he didn’t—this was where he learned his craft, where he fell in love with killing.

  I didn’t want to risk losing him. We were so close. He’d brought us here for a reason, like he wanted to share some part of himself before he disappeared forever. He migh
t be getting ready to go to ground, and I was terrified that if we called for backup and got forensics in here, it’d only drive him away that much faster.

  “We have to,” he said, gently pulling himself from me. “I know what you’re feeling, but we have to call it in.”

  “You’re right.” I walked toward the door. “God, I hope you’re right.”

  I stepped out into the forest again. It felt like returning from the underworld: I’d been dead inside, but now I was alive again. The sun slanted in through the trees above and I watched the branches sway, the leaves move in concentric little circles, and it seemed as if the whole forest was alive.

  I heard a crack and turned, prepared to run—but a deer stood twenty feet away, framed by bushes. It was a doe, wide eyes, small nose upturned toward me, scenting the air. I watched it, neither of us moving, until it turned and sprinted off.

  I heard Nick talking low into his phone, and I knew this place would be crawling with police before the day was over. That deer wouldn’t come back for a good while.

  22

  Nick

  The forensics team crawled over the shed like white-clad ants. They photographed and catalogued every inch of the place. I stood near the trees with Rose and watched them pick it apart, prying up floorboards, digging holes nearby, following any possible path that might lead to any worthwhile clue.

  There were no bodies, no human remains. “They might pull some DNA off the panties and the retainer,” I said to Rose as we walked back after hours of standing around, doing nothing more than watching. “But even that.” I shook my head.

  “How old do you think that stuff was?”

  “I’d guess he went to high school in the nineties. I’d bet he’s in his late thirties, maybe his forties, hard to say really.”

  “Young,” she said softly.

  “Older than me. A lot older than you.”

  “Still, that’s so much life ahead of him. It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to go down this path.”

  “You can’t picture it because you’re a sane, rational human. CGK isn’t sane or rational. His beliefs are deeply ingrained, and I very much doubt he’d ever be able to dig himself back out.”

  “Not that we’d let him.”

  I reached out and took her hand. She squeezed my fingers.

  The walk back was less stressful. We’d made the pilgrimage to that horrible shed, we saw what CGK wanted us to see, and now I felt like I knew the man better, like I’d gotten to read his old diaries. I pictured a young, lonely boy, sneaking out to that shack in the woods with his mother’s magazines cutting out pictures he liked, and maybe stealing from the local girls, taking little objects from them, learning what it felt like to break the rules.

  He might’ve started building his fantasy then and there. Perhaps that shed was his future, his heaven. Maybe, in some sick part of him, he pictured his afterlife with his harem of victims like that boyhood shed, a place secluded from the rest of the world where they could be with each other.

  That was his heaven, back when he was a child. Maybe all the killing, the desperation, the anger, the sickness, maybe it was all an attempt to get back there somehow. Back to the days when he was a boy and felt whole.

  He’d never feel that again. The past was gone. CGK couldn’t move on from it though and never would, and so he was stuck in a self-fulfilling hell, cursed to kill again and again, until it all ended.

  I hoped I could bring that end about as soon as possible.

  Judy was on the back porch when we arrived. The sun was setting and the sky was a beautiful pink. She stood and waved as we approached.

  “Wondered where you folks got off to. Your car was out front and I thought to myself— Well, Judy, they’re grown adults, they’re probably fine. And here you are.”

  “We went for a nice, long walk,” Rose said. “I think we’re calling it a night now.”

  “Did you two make it all the way to the end of the canal and back? Or maybe you walked to where the Delaware dumps into the sea. Bet that was pretty.”

  “Went further,” I said. “Walked out into the ocean. Visited London. Walked back.”

  Judy laughed and winked at me. “I bet you two are starving then. Come on in, I can make some dinner.” She disappeared inside and Rose gave me a look.

  “She likes you.”

  “All women like me,” I said. “You’ll get used to it.”

  She rolled her eyes so hard I thought they might fall out.

  Judy was a good cook. She served salad, fried chicken, coleslaw, and baked potatoes. It wasn’t exactly healthy—but it was delicious. Rose and I ate it sitting out back while Judy busied herself inside. It was strangely nice, sitting there after having spent all day in some shit-hole murder shack out in the middle of nowhere, watching forensics rip the place apart, waiting for them to find some decomposed corpse somewhere. It was odd, walking away, disappointed that they didn’t.

  A while later, we finished eating and I cleared our plates. I carried them inside, heading toward the kitchen, whistling to myself. “Judy,” I called out. “We’re all set. I think we’ll head up—”

  I stepped in through the kitchen door and stopped dead.

  Judy sat on a wooden chair, her hands behind her back. They looked bound, but I wasn’t sure.

  A man stood beside her holding a kitchen knife to her throat. Tears rolled down Judy’s cheeks.

  I looked from her to the man and I knew it was him.

  Recognition sparked inside of me.

  He twisted his lips back. He was small: five foot six, at most. His hair was black, cut close, parted on the left. His eyes were brown, his face thin and boring, the exact match to Detective Starch’s description. He had several cuts on his cheeks, still fresh from where Starch had fought him. He wore a black windbreaker and a pair of dark jeans. His hands were steady, and the knife was close enough to Judy’s throat to prick skin.

  “Hello, Nick,” he said.

  “I didn’t expect you.”

  He smiled very big. I got the sense he liked the idea of outsmarting me.

  “Of course you didn’t, and why would you? All you little ants, crawling all over the ground, looking for your next meal.”

  “Why don’t you let Judy go?” I asked, nodding toward her. “You don’t want her, right? You want me and Rose.”

  “I want Rose,” he hissed. “You’re incidental. You’re a roadblock. You’ve gotten in my way, back down south when I nearly found my one true love, and again when I nearly found another. You and your lady detective, that nasty woman.” His face twisted, like a lizard’s over a fire.

  “Let Judy go,” I said. “She’s not a part of this.”

  “She is now. Put the plates down and turn your back.”

  I moved slow. I put the plates on the nearest counter, but I didn’t turn my back on him. “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Gregory.”

  “Okay, Gregory. It’s nice to finally meet you. Did you know that I’m a huge fan?”

  He sneered. “Flattering little ant. Go ahead, suck on the dirt tread by your betters. Turn your back now, or I’ll slice this one open. She’s plain, and too old, but she’ll make a nice slave.”

  A choked sob escaped Judy’s lips.

  “You don’t want her,” I said, making a face. “She’s extremely rude and her cooking is terrible. Believe me, Gregory. You could do better.”

  “I said turn,” he hissed.

  I took a deep breath. Every part of me fought against this, but I turned my back on him slowly. It was like turning my back on a hungry bear. I knew he’d kill me, or try to kill me anyway.

  “Hands on your head,” he said. His voice was closer. I listened for his footsteps, but heard nothing.

  I raised them.

  “Nick,” Judy said.

  That was all the warning I got.

  I turned as the knife came down. I twisted to the side and it stabbed down into my shoulder. I gasped in pain and my arm wen
t numb. My fingers curled involuntarily, and I tried to swing them toward him, but they wouldn’t move.

  He hissed and ripped the knife back out. I stumbled back, my right hand going for the gun at my waistband. He came again and I kicked out, my back against the doorjamb, and caught him in the gut. He gasped, growling, and I managed to pull the gun.

  He tackled me as the gun went off. My bullet went wide, hitting the wall. Judy screamed, rocked sideways, and toppled to the floor. Gregory wrestled with me, and although I was larger, the pain in my shoulder form the stab wound made my whole body feel like ice. I couldn’t get leverage as he kicked my knee and threw me to the floor with him toppling over with me.

  We grappled for the gun. He slammed his head into my nose, breaking bone, and tried to bash his knee into my crotch. I twisted and wildly swung my bad arm toward him, but it did nothing—there was no strength in it. It was all I could do to hold on to the gun, because I knew if he got that, then this would be over.

  “You little bastard,” he snarled, and hit me in the face again. I fired the gun again, my ears ringing, but missed, hitting the ceiling. Plaster rained down on him. “You foolish shit. You’ll have nothing in eternity, you’ll be alone, you’ll be sad. I will take your women, your slaves, and feast on your soul for all time. You will be my jester, my clown in my court, you hear me? Nick the clown.” He hit me with his forehead, but missed the mark this time, and came back almost as bloody as I was.

  He cackled, nose gushing, and spit in my face. I rolled, throwing him off me, but he held onto the gun and wouldn’t let get. I fired a third time, missing again, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold on. My other arm was dead, numb and dead, and I was fighting him one-handed.

  There was a scream then a chair came down, one of the wooden dining room chairs. It smashed over Gregory’s back. He gasped in surprise and released the gun, rolling over. I took aim and fired, but missed as he threw himself into the kitchen.

  Rose came to my side. “You’re bleeding.”

  “I have to get him,” I said, pushing her off as she tried to press down on my wound. Agony flared, but I struggled to my feet.