Pretty Little Killers (The Keepers Book 1)

by Rita Herron

“Yes, it was,” Korine said. “He was serving time but escaped during a prison transfer.” She waited for Tinsley’s reaction, but the young woman simply breathed deeply, then turned and walked into the living area. She and Hatcher followed.

  “Someone cut his penis off and let him bleed to death,” Korine stated bluntly.

  Tinsley made a strangled sound in her throat. “That’s horrible. But . . . I’m sure the mothers of the children he hurt will sleep better now he’s gone.”

  “Probably,” Korine said. “Unless one of them killed him.”

  Tinsley sank onto the sofa. “I didn’t know any of those children or their families. And I certainly didn’t kill that depraved man.”

  “Maybe not, but let’s talk about your Heart & Soul blog, specifically responses from individuals,” Korine said.

  “I want victims and their families to share their stories,” Tinsley said. “My therapist suggested it would be good for me, and it has been. I hope it’s cathartic for others.”

  “It’s a form of group therapy, isn’t it?” Korine asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Tinsley said. “Except there isn’t a counselor to lead the group. Everyone is free to speak their minds. No judgment, just honest feelings.”

  “It’s all anonymous?”

  Tinsley nodded. “If someone wants to post their real name, they’re free to, but most people choose to remain anonymous or use fake names. The only rule I have is that everyone refrain from criticizing others. Feelings and emotions aren’t right or wrong. Everyone reacts differently to situations and trauma. Speaking those feelings or writing them down is a healthier way to purge dark emotions than acting upon them.”

  Korine slid onto the sofa beside her. “I know you want to protect the individuals posting, but a couple of the comments read as if they’re murder confessions.”

  Tinsley chewed her bottom lip, then looked up at Hatcher. “Some of us have fantasized about killing the person who hurt us,” she said in a choked voice. “You understand that—don’t you, Hatcher?”

  Hatcher muttered yes.

  “But that doesn’t mean we acted on those fantasies,” Tinsley said.

  Korine’s gaze met Hatcher’s. “But it’s possible that one of them did.”

  Hatcher’s eyes glittered with anger, then he gestured toward Tinsley’s computer. “Show us what you’re talking about.”

  Korine gave him an icy look, then crossed the room to Tinsley’s desk. Tinsley quickly joined her, accessed the blog, then allowed Korine to scroll through the posts.

  Hatcher hoped to hell Korine was wrong. But if someone had written a confession to Tinsley, he couldn’t ignore it.

  It didn’t mean that Tinsley knew a crime had been committed.

  Hell, she’d reported the judge’s murder.

  Still, Korine might have found a lead.

  His stomach rolled as he began to read:

  He had hurt too many young girls. Stripped them of their innocence and scarred them for life. Not just physical scars. But mental ones.

  The emotional ones were easier to hide. At least on the surface.

  But they are the hardest to overcome.

  I tried to make him pay before. The legal way.

  But he escaped justice.

  I knew he’d come for me. I lay in the dark with a knife gripped in my hand.

  The floor creaked. Then his voice.

  “I love them. You can’t take them away from me.”

  He liked to taunt his victims. To watch their faces contort with fear.

  To hear them scream.

  He lunged at me and reached for my throat.

  Channeling rage and pain into my will to live, I lifted my hand and rammed the knife into him.

  Blood gushed from his heartless chest and flooded my hand. I dug the knife deeper.

  His body jerked and spasmed, a guttural, choked sound filling the air as he realized he was going to die.

  That he would never touch another young girl again.

  He collapsed on top of me, and I gasped for air. That vile smell, his blood, the stench . . . I had to get away from him.

  His blood soaked my gown, my sheets, my arms and legs.

  I choked back a scream and shoved him off me. His head hit the floor with a whack. The rest of his body followed.

  Tears blurred my eyes. I had killed someone. Taken a human life.

  Only he hadn’t been human.

  I smiled. At least one monster was gone.

  But there would always be another.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Hatcher shifted uncomfortably as he finished the comment. He understood Korine’s suspicions.

  But these responses were anonymous, so Tinsley couldn’t know who’d written them. The author of that post hadn’t mentioned names either, not the name of her attacker or his alleged victims. And it didn’t fit specifically with the details of the crimes they were investigating.

  Tinsley bit down on her bottom lip. “This account could be of a dream or a nightmare. Sometimes victims are plagued by their experiences, and their fears and anger present themselves in dreams.”

  He could attest to that. For God’s sake, he was seeing his wife’s ghost.

  “That could be true,” Korine agreed.

  “There’s nothing specific that indicates anything about the judge or Whiting,” Hatcher added.

  “There are others.” Korine scrolled through and paused on another entry.

  Hatcher’s pulse clamored as he read:

  A MOTHER’S VENGEANCE

  My baby is seven years old now. Seven but I still call her my baby.

  I listen to her cries at night, and it tears me up inside. She no longer runs and plays with the innocence of a child.

  Instead, she has retreated into a silent world all her own. A world that holds her prisoner to the past and the day that awful man stole her youth.

  I should have seen it coming.

  I should have known.

  But I trusted him.

  I was wrong.

  A scream rips through the walls, and I race to her bedside. She’s tossing and turning, thrashing at the covers, fighting off the monster in her sleep.

  Except that he is very real.

  Rage boils inside me and possesses me like a live breathing animal.

  He walks free now while my little girl suffers.

  I won’t let him do this to another child. I have to get payback for my daughter.

  I close my eyes as I wrap my arms around her and rock her back to sleep. She’s stiff and tense at first as if she can’t stand me to touch her. Me, her own mother.

  That’s what he did to her.

  Made her afraid to be loved or held, afraid of affection. Afraid of her own shadow.

  I can do this, I think. I can take him out of this world.

  A plan takes shape in my mind. I will follow him. I will make him suffer. And one day my baby will know that I fought for her.

  And that I made him pay in the end for robbing her of her childhood.

  Hatcher scraped his hand through his hair. “These are disturbing, but they aren’t proof of anything.”

  “Do you read all the comments on your blog?” Korine asked.

  Tinsley drummed her fingers on her thigh. “I do. But remember, I set this up so people could share their feelings. Posting them online doesn’t mean they acted on any of these fantasies.”

  “But if you thought one of them had, would you tell us, Tinsley?”

  Hatcher held his breath while he waited for her response.

  The more entries Korine read, the more she sensed an underlying theme behind the scenes of Tinsley’s Heart & Soul.

  “Tinsley?” Korine asked. “Would you tell us if you thought someone on your blog had acted out their violent thoughts?”

  Tinsley pressed the backs of her hands against her eyes, drawing Korine’s attention to the scars on her hands. How could she possibly judge this woman after the way she’d suffered?

&n
bsp; “I don’t know,” Tinsley finally answered in a strained voice. “I’d like to think I would, but . . . reading these personal accounts is gut-wrenching. I know how I feel about my attacker. I used to think I couldn’t take a life, but if he came after me again, I would kill him and not blink twice.” She rose and went to stare out the window, her tone far away. “He changed me. I don’t like it, but he did.”

  Korine forced herself not to react. Hatcher gave her a cutting look, then eased up behind Tinsley. “It’s normal for you to feel that, but he hasn’t changed you as much as you think.”

  She spun on him, tears in her eyes. “How can you say that? I used to be active. I jogged, I had friends, I was social, I liked people.” Her voice cracked. “Now, I hide like a coward.”

  “You’re not a coward,” Korine said firmly. “You have reason to be afraid.”

  Tinsley gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Afraid? It’s more than that. I’m terrified of going outside, much less socializing. Last week two of my girlfriends wanted to visit, but I told them no. I can’t see them and talk about what happened, about Felicia. But I can’t see them and not talk about it.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “He took her because of me. She’s dead because of me.”

  “That’s not true.” Hatcher reached out to touch her arms to comfort her, but she jerked away.

  “Don’t, Hatcher. I told you, I can’t stand to be touched.”

  “I’m sorry.” He dropped his hands. “I understand more than you realize,” he said gruffly. “I blame myself for Felicia’s death. Wyatt and I both blame ourselves for not finding you sooner. If we had, that monster wouldn’t have gotten Felicia, and you wouldn’t have suffered so long.”

  “You didn’t know there were two of them,” Tinsley said.

  “We should have figured it out sooner. We let you both down.”

  Korine felt like an outsider, a voyeur to this private, heartfelt moment. But she couldn’t tear herself from the room.

  She had a job to do, and Hatcher was too personally involved to be objective. That meant she had to play bad cop to his good cop.

  Rain drizzled down the windowpane like tear tracks, the fog thickening over the inlet. The dreary mood inside the house mirrored the gray overcast sky and cloudy horizon.

  The vivid sunset well-known on the island would be missing tonight. It had been missing now for months for Tinsley.

  Hatcher was obviously not over his wife either.

  How could she possibly compete with her?

  The thought disturbed her—she wasn’t competing for Hatcher. She didn’t want him.

  Did she?

  Hatcher stepped away from Tinsley. He looked confused, lost.

  “Hatcher is right, Tinsley,” Korine said, eager to console the woman. “None of this was your fault. But if you know something, if someone tells you they’re going to commit a crime or have already done so, you have an obligation to tell us.”

  Tinsley’s tear-filled eyes turned to Korine. “What if I think they did the right thing?”

  Korine breathed out. “It doesn’t matter what we think,” Korine said softly. “If everyone took justice into their own hands, the world would be pure chaos. That’s why we have police and detectives and courts.”

  “They don’t always work,” Tinsley said.

  “She’s right,” Hatcher said in a low growl. “We failed her, just like the system failed the rape victims when Judge Wadsworth released the River Street Rapist.”

  “I admit that it doesn’t always work, but it’s the best we have,” Korine said. “And if we abandon it, who’s to say worse mistakes won’t be made? Look at that safety app and the chaos it caused. It was supposed to help keep the public safe. But instead it caused panic, and innocents were hurt.”

  Hatcher heaved a weary sigh. “In theory, you’re correct. But—”

  “There is no ‘but,’” Korine cut in. “Tinsley, promise me that if you learn something, you’ll call us.”

  Tinsley traced her fingers over a spot on the fog-coated window.

  “Promise me,” Korine said firmly.

  “I promise,” Tinsley said in a voice so low it was almost lost in the whir of the rumbling furnace.

  “Thanks for talking to us,” Hatcher said. “We’ll get out of your hair now.”

  Tinsley didn’t respond. She simply remained by the window as they walked to the door and let themselves out.

  Korine tried to squash her internal voice of suspicion. She wasn’t sure she trusted Tinsley to call.

  She’d ask Cat to analyze the blog posts and see whether she could locate the origin of the suspicious comments.

  Guilt nagged at her, though. She was invading these women’s private lives and thoughts. A therapist would argue that their comments were confidential.

  But they were on the Internet, and nothing there was sacred.

  Hatcher drove Korine to the prison to pick up her car, then followed her to her house so they could ride together to the briefing meeting.

  He understood Korine was doing her job. He should have been asking the same questions as she was. But . . .

  There was no way he could accuse Tinsley of anything. Not when her captor was still at large.

  The bastard was probably biding his time until he had the opportunity to come back for Tinsley.

  He’d stalked his victims before abducting them. He might be watching her now.

  Concerned for her safety, he phoned Wyatt. The phone rang three times before he answered, enough time for Hatcher to question his decision to call him.

  Wyatt sounded winded when he answered. “I was just getting ready to leave for the meeting.”

  Rain slashed the window in a steady rhythm as Hatcher drove across the causeway. “You’re coming?”

  Wyatt sighed. “I’m sick of these four walls. I told you I’m ready to get back to work.”

  An image of Wyatt lying bloody and helpless flashed in Hatcher’s mind. Wyatt connected to dozens of tubes while he lay in a medically induced coma for weeks. Wyatt struggling to walk . . .

  “Are you sure? I thought you were going to work on those files from home.”

  “Don’t start,” Wyatt said. “Now, is there a reason you called? Cause it’ll take me a few minutes to shower before I come.”

  “I just talked to Tinsley.”

  An awkward silence followed.

  “How is she?” Wyatt finally asked.

  “Struggling,” Hatcher said. “She blames herself for Felicia’s death.”

  “Shit, that’s not right.”

  “I know, but she’s alone and scared and probably not sleeping.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Actually, I called to fill you in before the meeting.” Hatcher explained about the blog and Korine’s suspicions.

  “Do you think Tinsley knows who murdered the judge?”

  Another awkward silence. “She says she doesn’t, but . . . I’m not sure. Have you seen her or talked to her?”

  Wyatt muttered something beneath his breath. “I’m probably the last person she wants to have contact with.”

  “She might open up to you,” Hatcher said.

  Wyatt cursed. “Don’t ask me to use Tinsley, not for anything.” Wyatt’s breath hissed out. “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  The phone went silent. Hatcher felt like a heel for his suggestion. But if Tinsley opened up to Wyatt, they could control the situation.

  Keep her name out of it.

  Irritated, he punched the accelerator as he followed Korine to Savannah. Traffic thickened as they drove past the square, then onto Korine’s street.

  He pulled in Korine’s drive behind her. She climbed out, then motioned that she was going inside for a moment. He cut the engine and decided to wait in the car.

  Thunder boomed above. Storm clouds rolled across the sky, the fog thick, the streets cast in an ominous gray. It was too early for a tropical depression, but tornado season was upon them. The sky looked fitting for a funnel
cloud.

  Korine swung the front door open, but instead of walking toward his vehicle, she motioned for him to join her.

  Something wasn’t right.

  His heartbeat picked up, and he threw the door open and jogged up the drive. “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone’s been inside,” she said, her voice cracking. “Come in and take a look.”

  Tension knotted his shoulders, and he pulled his gun, holding it at the ready as he entered. She quickly regained composure and joined him, her face stricken as she halted in the living area, facing the fireplace.

  His pulse clamored as he realized what had upset her.

  Three porcelain doll heads sat on the mantel, their eyes glowing yellow against the darkness, their bodies missing as if the heads had been severed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Louie Hortman had to pay.

  The son of a bitch acted like he was a good man, but she knew different.

  He was a deacon in his church, never missed one of his son’s basketball games, and regularly donated money to charities.

  Looks could be deceiving. He was also a smarmy teacher who’d taken advantage of the teenage girls he taught in driver’s education.

  The girls had been afraid to come forward. They were embarrassed. Ashamed. Thought they’d done something to invite his touch.

  He needed his vile hands cut off.

  The Keeper smiled as she removed the duffel bag from the trunk of her car. She’d been watching him for weeks. Knew his routine. Had been waiting for the right time.

  Today he had an opening in his schedule.

  She’d arranged for a private lesson. The son of a bitch thought he was meeting teenage Zoe.

  Zoe wasn’t coming.

  But she deserved justice for what he’d planned for her.

  The sick pervert preyed on the fact that peer pressure would prevent the girls from spilling his dirty little secret.

  Tears blurred her eyes as she stepped into the shadows of the nearby oak. The park was a perfect place to meet. It was secluded. Vacant this time of day.

  Funny that Hortman hadn’t even questioned her choice when any reputable, nice man would have insisted on meeting at the driving school where he worked.

  Because he wanted the privacy.