The Morning After

by Lisa Jackson

  “Great,” Reed muttered under his breath as he noticed headlights through the trees. The last thing they needed was a media circus up here.

  “Keep ’em away from the scene,” Baldwin ordered, his scowl as deep as Reed’s. To McFee, he said, “Let’s give Reed a look at the other body. The one below.”

  Careful to disturb very little, the big man gently lifted Bobbi’s head with his gloved hands.

  In the klieg’s glow, a partially decomposed face stared up at them, a macabre skull with features that were indistinguishable, only a layer of thin gray hair curled tight and what had once been a blue dress indicated that the body below had once been an elderly woman.

  Reed shook his head and clenched his teeth. It wasn’t the rotting woman that bothered him; he’d seen bodies in all stages of decay, but the thought that Bobbi had been awake, aware that she was being buried alive along with a cadaver caused bile to rise up his throat. What kind of sicko would do this? Who knew that he and Bobbi had been lovers? Who cared enough and was twisted to the point that they would do this?

  Jerome Marx.

  Why else address the note to Reed and leave it in the coffin?

  But why would he bury her atop the other woman—who the hell was she? And surely he would know if he put a note in the coffin addressed to Reed that he would become the prime suspect. Jerome Marx was many things, many bad things, but he wasn’t stupid.

  The sheriff rubbed his jaw, scraping the stubble of his beard, while in the distance the dogs howled plaintively. “When we’re done here, I think we should go back to the office and you can give me a statement.”

  By the time Nikki Gillette pulled into the Dahlonega office of the sheriff’s department, it was late, after nine P.M. She’d been on the road for hours and her bones ached. Her stomach rumbled, her head pounded and she still hadn’t figured out how to get to Pierce Reed. Worse yet, she wasn’t alone. Several news vans were camped out in the department lot, more parked along the street. And her heart sank when she recognized not only Norm Metzger, but Max O’Dell from WKAM, a Savannah television station. There were other reporters as well, some from Atlanta and a couple of others she knew but couldn’t name. Whatever had happened up on Blood Mountain was shaping up to be the story of the week.

  Some way, she had to get the inside track.

  Norm spotted her and climbed out of his car. “What’re you doing up here?”

  “Same as you.”

  “Mike put you onto the story?” he asked, arching an eyebrow above his rimless glasses. The photographer had slid from behind the passenger side and joined a growing throng of reporters huddled around the police station.

  “I just thought I’d come up and check things out,” she said.

  “It’s a pretty long trip for a joyride,” Norm observed.

  “I was interested, okay?”

  “So you found out about the bodies.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that Pierce Reed was called up here.”

  She nodded as Norm pulled on a pair of gloves. “He doesn’t like you, you know.”

  “He doesn’t like any reporters.”

  “But you in particular. You really got on his nerves during the Montgomery case.”

  “Is that right? Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t have to. I saw the way he bristled every time you approached him.”

  “He’s a bristly kind of guy.”

  “Especially when you’re around.” The main door to the sheriff’s department opened and Sheriff Baldwin along with several detectives, including Pierce Reed, appeared on the concrete steps.

  The sheriff, without the aid of a microphone, asked everyone to “Listen up.” The shuffling, whispering and general speculating stopped and everyone poised, pen, recorder, or pencil in hand. Cameras were pointed at the group of officers. “We’re all tired here, and I suppose you are, so I’m going to make this short. This afternoon there was an emergency call to 911. It sounded like a hunting accident involving two youths. When we got to the scene, we life-flighted one of the young men to Mason Hospital in Atlanta, while the other one gave us a statement. The two had found what appeared to be a grave up near Blood Mountain, so we went up to investigate. Sure enough we found a grave and not one, but two bodies. At this time, pending ID of the bodies and notification of next of kin, we’ll give out no further information, but we are looking into the situation as a possible homicide. That’s all.”

  But the reporters wanted answers. Several began shouting at once.

  “Sheriff Baldwin? Do you expect to find any more bodies?”

  “How long had the victims been there?”

  “Why did you call in a detective from Savannah?”

  “Is the hunter going to survive?”

  “I said, that’s all,” Baldwin reiterated in a voice that was firm and bordered on belligerent. He looked weary but determined as he raked his gaze along the crowd. “We’ll have more information in the morning. For now, you all best get some rest.” He waved off any more questions and disappeared inside. Nikki edged closer and thought she caught Reed’s eye, but if he saw her, he made no sign of acknowledgment, no indication that he recognized her. The door swung shut behind him and lest any reporter be so bold as to follow, a deputy was posted at the door.

  “So, now what?” Norm said, sidling closer.

  “Now, I guess, we wait,” Nikki said, though she had no intention of sitting around and waiting for parceled-out information. Not when she lived only a few streets away from Pierce Reed.

  “Two bodies in one coffin?” Sylvie Morrisette wrinkled her nose as she flopped into one of the side chairs in Reed’s office the next morning. Her platinum hair seemed even more spiked than before and there was the faint, ever-present smell of cigarettes that wafted across the desk. “That’s a new one. Someone couldn’t afford his own accommodations?”

  “Hers,” Reed clarified, not amused at her attempt at humor. He wasn’t in the mood. He’d spent half the night in northern Georgia knowing that the sheriff and a couple of the detectives considered him a suspect, then had grabbed a couple hours of sleep before walking nearly comatose through the shower and landing behind this desk around six-thirty. He was surviving on coffee, Tums and Excedrin. A half-eaten doughnut was in his wastebasket, the only reminder of his last meal. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes.

  “One of the vics is Barbara Jean Marx. The other is still a Jane Doe.”

  “Barbara Jean Marx?” Morrisette’s eyebrows puckered together, showing off her most recent silver stud. “I’ve heard the name somewhere.”

  “Married to Jerome Marx until recently.” He gritted his teeth at the thought of how easily she’d lied to him and how he’d so willingly believed her. “Marx owns an import/export business downtown. I thought I’d go pay him a visit and give him the news personally.”

  “You know him?” Morrisette asked as she scrounged in her purse and dragged out a piece of gum. “Cuz it seems like you do.”

  He hesitated. Decided he may as well confide in her. “I knew Bobbi Jean. We were involved.”

  “And you’re going to talk to the ex? Isn’t that against department policy?”

  “A detective from Lumpkin County—Davis McFee—will be with me.”

  Morrisette lifted an eyebrow. “You got yourself your own police escort?”

  “Very funny,” he mocked, though the thought rankled. Obviously, Baldwin didn’t trust him. Would you? Come on! Baldwin’s just covering his ass. “I thought maybe you’d want to tag along.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” She unwrapped a disfigured stick of gum and popped it into her mouth. “So, fill me in.”

  Reed told her everything he remembered, from the chopper ride upstate through the grisly discoveries in the grave to the meeting in which Sheriff Baldwin ‘for the sake of department integrity’ had decided to send McFee to lead the investigation. The fact that he was allowing Reed, an ex-lover of Bobbi Jean’s, to tag along, severely bent
the rules. When he’d finished, Morrisette whistled. “Jesus, Reed, what a mess. You think the note in the coffin is connected with the one delivered here yesterday?”

  “Seems like too much of a coincidence not to. And it looks identical. Same paper, same handwriting. The lab is comparing the two as well as checking for prints.”

  “We should get so lucky,” Morrisette muttered as the phone rang.

  Reed held up a finger, silently asking her to wait, and picked up. Though he was hoping for information on Bobbi and the other woman in the coffin, it was another case in which a couple of kids were playing with their father’s revolver and one ended up dead. A depressing way to start an already bad morning.

  While he was on the call, Morrisette’s beeper went off and she grabbed her cell phone from her fringed purse and disappeared out the door. She returned before he hung up, but didn’t slide into the chair again. Instead, she propped her slim butt on the windowsill and waited until he hung up. The door to his office was ajar and he heard voices and footsteps, officers and staff arriving for the day shift.

  “So, when are you visiting the deceased’s husband to give him the news?” Morrisette asked as a telephone jangled down the hallway.

  “Ex-husband. As soon as the detective from Lumpkin County gets here.”

  “What about the autopsy?”

  “Done in Atlanta, sometime today, probably. It’s got priority. But first they want someone besides me to ID the body.”

  “Who knew you were involved with the woman?”

  “Aside from Marx, no one.”

  “No one that you knew. She could have spilled the beans to a friend.”

  “Or Marx could have.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Six, maybe seven weeks ago.”

  “That when you called it off?”

  “Yep.”

  “Learned that she wasn’t quite divorced.”

  “Mmm.”

  “When was she reported missing?”

  “She wasn’t. I checked with Rita in Missing Persons.” He loosened the top button on his collar and yanked at his tie. “But then, she hadn’t been dead all that long. The coroner thinks less than twelve hours when we found her. We’re starting to work backward from then, find out who saw her last, what she was doing.” He glanced at the clock. “I thought I’d check with the jewelry store where she worked.”

  “You know any of her friends?”

  He thought, and shook his head, then thought that he’d really not even known her. Their affair had been sexual, yes, but not much more than that. And yet…the killer had linked them and it soured his stomach to think that she might have died such a horrid death because of her link to him.

  As if Sylvie Morrisette had read his mind, she said, “Don’t beat yourself up. I see it in your eyes. You think this woman is dead because of you. Because of the notes.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Not yet. Neither do you.” She hopped off the sill. “Let’s stay objective.”

  Reed wondered if that were possible.

  He had the distinct feeling it might not be.

  The phone jangled and he picked it up just as Detective McFee arrived. The big man dwarfed Morrisette and Reed couldn’t help but think of Lurch of the Addams Family on seeing McFee in the morning light. Not only was he large and rawboned, but his skin was sallow and his eyes deep-set. Reed introduced the two detectives, noticed how Morrisette gave McFee the once-over, and mentally chastised himself. Why was it Sylvie “tough-as-nails” Morrisette, four times divorced, still sized up every man she met as if they might be the candidate for number five?

  Grabbing his jacket, he decided he’d never figure it out.

  A slow smile crept across The Survivor’s face as he watched the morning news. The late-night reports had been sketchy, but as the day had broken, more information was surfacing about the discovery in the ravine near Blood Mountain. It was the lead story.

  Balancing on the edge of his ottoman, he recorded and watched five different screens, all with different reporters, but all telling essentially the same tale. There was footage of the grave site, taken from helicopters that had hovered above the bottom of the ravine as dawn crept over the forest floor. Crime scene workers were still searching the ground for evidence. The area around the grave had been marked in a grid, and the workers painstakingly sifted through every inch of soil, dead leaves and dry grass. As if they’d find anything.

  His blood quickened at the thought that he’d caused this confusion. That all these people were working because of him. That Pierce Reed’s life had been disturbed and he’d been dragged up north to the place he’d been born. Reed had spent the first few years of his life in a two bedroom house outside of Dahlonega. A bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool Georgia cracker, though most people assumed he’d started life somewhere in the Midwest and Reed did little to disavow this misinformation. The man was a fake. A phony. A slimeball.

  But he was about to get his comeuppance.

  One of the screens flickered with the image of the dead buck—the deer that lunatic kid had killed. Some of The Survivor’s joy diminished…He hadn’t counted on the hunters. Had thought he was alone along the windswept deer trails.

  He climbed to his feet and could barely stand up in this small room where the televisions dominated one brick wall and their flickering screens offered the only light. One wall was all shelves, floor to ceiling filled with all of his electronic equipment. Microphones. Video cameras. Surveillance gear. And hundreds of movies he’d purchased on tape and DVD. Movies about heroes who had beat the odds, who had survived and avenged, who had taken justice into their own hands, who had meted out their own kind of payback.

  Charles Bronson.

  Bruce Lee.

  Clint Eastwood.

  Mel Gibson.

  Keanu Reeves.

  Actors who had portrayed tough men were his idols. Stories that told of men enduring horrid pain, then wreaking vengeance. Mad Max, Rambo, The Matrix…those were the films that made his blood run hot.

  He had few clothes hidden here, though, in his other life, the one he let the world see, he had suits and jeans, dress shirts, Dockers and even polo shirts. But here, his needs were simple. Basic. Hooks held his camouflage outfit and wet suit. A steel door hid a closet he’d fashioned himself, small, confining, dark. With no doorknob on the interior side. A perfect place to keep someone alive. His furniture was sparse—a worktable, a battered chair and ottoman facing the screens and his prize, an antique dresser and mirror he’d salvaged from his mother’s home.

  He walked to the bureau and saw his reflection in the cracked oval mirror. Backlit by the flickering screens, he studied his image. Icy eyes stared back at him—eyes that had been labeled troubled, or sexy, or bedroom or cold. Rimmed with spiky lashes and protected by thick brows, one of which was split and bore a small scar. Even that imperfection had added to his allure with women; some considered him thrilling and dangerous.

  Sensual.

  A brooding, quiet man with secrets.

  If they only knew.

  He saw his upper body, strong from working out—army style. Fingertip push-ups and hundreds of chin-ups and sit-ups. Swimming. Running. Exertion. Perfection. Every muscle honed.

  How else would he have survived?

  He opened the second drawer and looked at the clothes within. A lacy black slip, bra and panties…the whore Barbara Jean Marx’s underclothes. There were other scraps as well, rotting fabric that had been covering the dead woman’s privates. Nasty, dirty, now encased in a plastic sack. He needed the old underwear, of course, so that his collection would be complete, but didn’t want the torn, filthy, rotting fabric to touch the silken perfection of Barbara Jean Marx’s expensive panties, slip and bra.

  Touching the whore’s underthings, running the silk through his fingers brought a welcome warmth to his blood and he closed his eyes for a second, lifted the panties to his nostrils, felt the thickening
in his groin. As much as he’d hated her, he’d lusted after her. All normal men did.

  And what do you think is normal about you, you useless, stupid sack of shit?

  The voice withered his erection and he forced himself not to hear the taunts that still reverberated through his mind. He folded Barbara Jean’s underclothes and slipped them into their plastic sack, then gave himself a swift mental kick for losing the ring…damn it all to hell, he’d wanted that ring, fancied himself fondling the glittering stones as he’d watched the news about Barbara Jean Marx, ex-model, rich wife’s bizarre death. But somehow, he’d lost the damned ring. Another mistake. His jaw tightened.

  Slipping her clothes into the second drawer, he noticed the drops of dried blood on the bureau and touched them lightly with the pad of his thumb. As he often did. Just to remember. But he was careful not to wipe the drops too hard, needed them to stay where they were, even the ones that ran down the side. A few dark stains settled over the lip of the top drawer and around the keyhole, but he didn’t open it. Would never. That private space was sacred. Could not be violated. He touched the chain at his neck and the small key that hung from it.

  Sometimes it was tempting to take off the links of worn gold and slip the key into its lock and listen as it clicked. The old drawer would open slowly, sealed from the blood that had once been sticky, and then he would…

  Not! He would never open the drawer.

  All the recording lights were glowing. He could leave. Assume his other life. He licked his lips and tried to slow the rapid beat of his heart as he took one last look at the news and the havoc he’d caused. Because of a whore’s gruesome death. Again, he imagined her waking in the coffin, terror riddling her body. He could have hauled the coffin to the surface, been her hero and taken her then. She would have done anything for him. Spread her legs. Sucked his cock. Anything.

  He felt a rush of desire, a jet of lust running through his bloodstream, and he imagined Pierce Reed in bed with her.

  Bastard.