by Blake Pierce
The stairway came to an end just off of the foyer upstairs. Another set was directly beside her, going up into the second floor. She peered up those stairs but did not take them. Instead, she moved through the foyer and into the house. The area where the foyer and living room met was a wide open space, highlighted by an absolutely stunning chandelier hanging from the high ceiling.
The house was an open-floor plan, the foyer, living room, den area, and dining room all joined together. The kitchen was the only room that seemed to occupy its own space, separated from the rest of the area by a long bar.
She took a step deeper into the house and nearly screamed when her phone chimed at her. She slapped at her pocket, embarrassed that she had been so frightened of the noise of an incoming text. As she pulled the phone out, she was also embarrassed that she had failed to put it on silent mode upon entering the house. If there was anyone hiding away somewhere else within the home, she had just given herself away.
She saw that the incoming text was from DeMarco. It was a simple OK in response to the text she had sent earlier. She slipped the phone back into her pocket and continued on into the house. By the time she reached the kitchen area, she felt foolish for having climbed in through the window downstairs. Yes, the scrapes on the window and the fact that it had been unlocked was proof that someone had broken in, but had she really been expecting to find a squatter just hanging out in the house? Had she really been expecting to come across the man who had killed three women, idly wasting his time away in what might have been the scene for one of his future murders?
Kate stood by the kitchen counter and sighed. She checked her watch and saw that she had a little less than ten minutes before Brett Towers was scheduled to arrive. And really, that was just a waste of time; she’d only needed him to show up so he could unlock the front door for her.
You’ve overthought something again, she thought, scolding herself. You have a very likely suspect back at the police department. Were you really too disappointed with how you came upon finding him? Did tweaking your right knee not provide enough of a thrill for you?
The voice that scolded her belonged to Allen. But she could also hear Melissa in there, too. And buried under it all was another looming suspicion—one she did not want to face but had known was there from the moment she had arrived in Estes.
Are you that determined to crack a case where DeMarco was assigned as lead? Do you really want to take that from her?
Of course she didn’t. And with that thought in mind, she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Brett Towers. Sorry to be a pain, but scratch the visit to Duffey Street. Sorry if you’re already out and on your way.
She took a final look around the large open area of the first floor and started back for the stairs. She figured she’d go back out the window downstairs. She’s take a picture and send it to Towers, just so he would know.
And after that, she’d head back to the station and do what she could to support DeMarco. She wanted to be there to celebrate closing the case—to help her through the potential minefield of a televised news conference. And after all of that, when she had returned home, she’d go to the doctor and see what was going on with her knee. Because as she walked back to the stairs, the pain started to come back, flaring up and radiating up her leg.
She was so focused on her knee and trying not to apply to much pressure on it that she missed the very brief shadow that momentarily fell across the floor in front of her. And it was that bit of inattention that caused all of the trouble that followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
He was dreaming of his mother again. For the past few weeks, he’d been afraid to go to sleep because he knew there would be a dream of his mother waiting for him. He enjoyed seeing her in the dreams, but it was painful to wake up and realize she was no longer there. In the dreams, she looked beautiful. Her face was flawless and unmarred by the car accident that had taken her life. The last time he had physically seen her was in a hospital bed, kept alive by the machines surrounding the bed. The right side of her face had been partially burned, her right eye swollen shut and charred. Her jaw had also been dislocated, set in a way that made it look as if she were perpetually angry.
But in the dreams, she was perfect. She could smile at him and both of her ice-blue eyes would regard him with patience and love.
“What have I told you about being nice to the other kids in school?” she asked him in this most recent dream.
“To be kind,” he answered.
“That’s right. Now…what you’ve been doing…is that very nice?”
“No. But I had to. Mom, I had to do it.”
“And why is that?”
He knew the answers but could not state them in the dream. It was as if these dreams were his mother’s own private dominion and he could not do or say anything in these dreams that would upset her. And he was fine with that.
In the dream, they were standing in a perfectly empty house. The floors had been put down in the living room and the tile had been set in the kitchen. There was no furniture yet. The walls still smelled like paint and the windows were new and sparkling. The entire house was bathed in perfect sunlight, casting their long shadows across the bare floors.
“I think it’s time you stop now, Dougie,” his mother said.
She’d called him that even up until he day she had died. He was twenty-eight and she had still called him that. He hated it and loved it all at the same time.
“I can’t,” he said. “It just makes me so mad, Mom. It makes me so mad and I can’t stop. I can’t help it.” He squinted against the glare of the sun through the large kitchen window and added: “Is there something wrong with me?”
His mother opened her mouth to answer but a voice did not come out. Instead, it was an electronic sort of beeping noise that he heard.
“Mom?”
Dougie’s eyes sprang open and he found himself looking at the ceiling of an upstairs bedroom.
That noise from his mother’s mouth had not been from the dream. It had come from somewhere close by…somewhere inside the house.
He sat up, noticing that the sunlight coming in through the bedroom window was faded. He peered outside and saw that it was nearing dusk. He’d been asleep for several hours then; he wondered if the agent had already come and gone—if the agent had come at all. Ever since the FBI had shown up in town, there seemed to have been some sort of freeze on all real estate proceedings.
Well, someone is downstairs right now, he thought. That dinging noise was from a cell phone.
He supposed it could be the agent. From what he had put together, there was an agent due to arrive at this home in the next day or so. Of course, things had slowed down over the last day or so. And even if things were normal, he knew that any agent who might be here at such an hour—about half an hour away from dark falling outside—they’d be with a potential client. And if that was the case, he was going to have to get creative just to get out of this one.
He got to his feet, figuring he may as well go down to see who was there.
As he stood, he grabbed the piece of lumber he had brought in with him earlier in the day. It was slightly dented and had dried blood on it.
He also gathered up the length of rope he had brought in with him. He’d spied the chandelier downstairs. It was massive and, from what he could tell, could likely hold quite a bit of weight. It had been installed with industrial bolts, indicating some heavy installation equipment hidden within the ceiling.
He snuck out of the room and made his way down the hallway as quietly as he could. For a moment, he thought he was being followed. He turned to check behind him, nearly expecting to see his mother walking alongside him. But of course, she wasn’t there. She had been buried in the same graveyard as his father, laid to rest a little over five months ago.
As he walked to the stairs, he remembered her fondly. He remembered her wanting to make a better life for him. She’d tried starting that life with the little bit of
money they’d come into after his father had died. She’d found them a home in a respectable neighborhood, next to the best schools in the area. But then they’d lost that house because of poor money management (he still didn’t know the ins and outs of all that had happened) and she’d dragged him in and out of homes in that same neighborhood, just about an hour away from Estes. She’d never been able to afford the sort of home she’d wanted and it had been that experience that had caused him to resent the real estate industry—not just the builders and contractors, but the agents, too.
He knew she would frown upon what he was doing…but he also knew she might find some skewed sense of justice to it.
Dougie came to the stairs and started descending. His steps were soft and a few seconds apart. His caution allowed him to hear the delicate footfalls from below. Soft, plotting…as if whoever was down there was also walking with caution, as if they, too, were trying to go unnoticed.
When he had only three steps left before he came to the first floor, Dougie stopped. He gripped the board tightly, its wooden surface digging into the flesh of his palm. He took a sudden step back when he realized that the late afternoon sunlight from the window above the front door had momentarily sketched his shadow along the floor.
He heard the footsteps drawing closer…closer.
He inhaled, held the breath, and waited.
And when he saw the woman come into view, he attacked.
***
Kate came to the rail where the steps started downstairs. She nearly started down them but then paused for a moment to stretch out her sore knee. She would not realize it until later, but it was likely that split second of self-care that saved her life.
The moment she stopped and extended her right leg out, she got the sense of something moving through the air. She looked up and, though it confused the hell out of her, her instincts caused her to jump back. Doing so with her leg outstretched resulted in her stumbling backward. As she did, she felt something—a piece of wood, from what she could tell—go sailing by her face. It missed her nose by less than three inches, and she could feel and smell the wood as it passed by. But it wasn’t being thrown. No, it was being swung much like a baseball bat.
The adrenaline surging through her only briefly masked the pain in her knee. As she fell backward, her leg still outstretched, she stretched her knee out a bit too much. The pain was extraordinary. She screamed just as she saw the man who had been wielding the piece of lumber. He came bounding down the last few steps, already bringing the piece of wood back for another swing. As he did so, Kate’s mind fired off what seemed like a billion thoughts, all one right behind the other.
This is the killer.
That piece of lumber is what he’s been hitting the people with before hanging them.
And oh God, there’s a rope in his other hand.
Kate fumbled for her gun, momentarily blinded by panic and the pain in her right knee. She unclasped the holster and had her hand on the grip but by the time she was able to actually start pulling it free, the man was bringing the wood down and hard across in an arc. Kate rolled hard to the right, barely avoiding the blow. The edge of the wood clipped her shoulder, but just barely.
She tried scrambling to her feet but in doing so, too much pressure was applied to her knee. She bellowed in pain as the knee buckled and gave out beneath her. Her back was to the killer, so she knew her only option at this point was to draw her gun, roll over, and hope she could draw on him before he smashed her face in with his wooden weapon.
But as it turned out, she did not have time for that. As she tried to roll over, she felt something slide over her head. It went over easily, almost naturally. And once it was over her head, she felt the smooth yet textured surface of the rope as it was pulled tight around her neck.
She pulled her gun but as she freed it, her hand was slapped away. She held on to the gun a moment longer but the pressure at her neck and her knee were too much to bear. If she didn’t relieve some of the weight from her knee, she was afraid she might pass out from the pain. She tried scooting up on her left leg and as she did, the killer planted a knee hard into her back. The impact of it caused her to drop her Glock. It clattered uselessly to the floor, but she barely noticed it. She was too focused on the tightness around her neck and the feeling of being pulled backward.
She tried scrambling for purchase, but the wood floors were too slick. She did her best to keep her thoughts oriented, to keep herself from falling into panic. She relied on a tactic that had saved her life at least twice in the past—a tactic that attackers rarely even considered.
Rather than grasping for the portion of the rope that had been tied around her neck, Kate reached up over her head, trying to find the strand that she was being pulled by. She slapped at it, finally found a grip, and clutched it with both hands. She then planted her left foot against the edge of the bottom step (another stretch that was almost too much for her) and then pulled forward with all of her strength.
The killer had clearly not been expecting this. He came scrambling forward, colliding with Kate’s back. Kate took advantage of this, reaching up and grabbing his head between her shoulder and forearm. She then fell to her back, as flat as she could, rolling to her side and applying a sloppy choke hold.
Her Glock was lying less than three feet away. She could reach for it, but doing so would free the killer. He was slapping at her blindly, his hands striking the side of her face, her chest, her shoulder. Her grip on him was weak and she knew he would be able to escape the hold in just several seconds. Given that, she supposed going for the gun was the wisest option.
She released him and then reached for the gun. Her fingers fell on it just as she was yanked backward. Apparently, the killer had never lost his hold in the rope. He held her away from the gun like a man walking a dog and pulling back on the leash. Kate gagged a bit, still reaching for the gun.
The killer then gave a violent tug of the rope. It was hard enough to make Kate lose any hope of regaining her feet. She went falling back to the floor, then sliding along it. She watched her Glock grow further and further away as she was choked and pulled backward at the same time.
She watched the world go sliding by as she grabbed for anything that might stop her. The rail for the downstairs steps went by, too high for her to grab. She tried rolling over to hook her left foot on that first stair going down but it was a clumsy effort that did nothing more than irritate her still-howling right knee.
She then saw the chandelier come into view. Made of iron and hovering about fifteen feet overhead, it looked like some weird spaceship. She recalled the victims from the other homes, hanging in some form or another, and knew what was coming. She had to do something, even if it meant injuring herself further. It was either suffering an injury or suffering a gruesome death.
Wincing at the pain she knew was coming, she planted her right foot on the floor, then her left. She scrambled behind the killer now, not being pulled anymore, but led. When she got to both of her feet, she launched off at him.
Pain exploded in her right knee. She screamed as she went into the killer in a tackle. It was well-aimed but not quite strong enough. She collided with him, only causing him to stumble backward a bit. She went for his wrist, trying to capture it between her hands. If she could just break his wrist, making it impossible for him to hold the damned rope…
But he yanked his hands away. He then brought his right hand back, still holding the board, and brought it down. Kate slipped to the left, dodging the blow, and managed to trap his arm between her own left arm and her side. She took the moment to her advantage, positioning her right hand palm-up and sending a driving punch into the killer’s chin.
There was a loud clink as his teeth clamped together. The man’s eyes went wide as he stumbled backward. She prayed the blow was enough to knock him out, but he managed to blink the attack away.
In his surprise, though, he had dropped the rope.
Kate dashed for the Glock. When sh
e was close enough to it, almost back to the stairs, she dove for it, intending to slide.
But again, her damned knee slowed her down. Rather than sliding for the gun, it was more like a clumsy collapse. And as she reached for it, a clubbing blow fell along her back. She screamed out, curling into a slight ball to try her best to protect herself from the next blow from the chunk of wood.
But the killer had apparently had enough. He pulled the rope even tighter around her neck. Kate felt her eyes bulging and realized with dawning horror that with his new cinching, she could no longer draw breath in through her nose. She could manage a few shallow breaths through her mouth, but it was not nearly enough.
The killer pulled the rope even tighter and pulled her back toward the chandelier. Kate did her best to fight but as she rose up her knees, her right knee buckled again and the pain in her back from the blow was just too much. Her body tried to fall over but was held up by the taut rope. As it kept her from falling, it also strangled her.
Kate resorted to desperate measures, digging her fingers into the rope at her neck. She tried slipping her fingers between the rope and her skin, but it was just too tight. And with this realization, there came another: she could now no longer draw in any breath.
She gazed up at the killer. He was smiling, his brow starting to break out in sweat. Kate watched as he tossed the other end of the rope up over the chandelier. He did it with expert precision, as if he had been practicing the move for a while.
With the free end up and over the center of the chandelier, the killer gave another tug on Kate’s end of the rope. It felt like it was slicing into her skin now, not only strangling her but cutting her open.
Little white spots started to flicker in her field of vision. She gasped, trying to scream, trying to do anything to free herself. But then the killer was pulling again. This time, he was grunting as some of Kate’s weight came up off of the floor. She gagged against the motion, the top half of her body leaning forward. Those white flecks became red and black as her lungs started to beg for air.