Blacke and Blue

by Fiona Blackthorne

  Had the killer followed them? No animal would be stupid enough to snap a branch. Only the killer would know where this dump site was. Trisha could practically feel her eyeballs pounding from her heartbeats. She reached for that small thread of training that dangled just out of reach and grasped it, pulling herself to a place where practice could take over.

  Her hand slid to her gun in its holster on the back of her jeans. She eased the safety off and strained to hear the next sound because she knew the next sound would come.

  Heartbeat.

  Heartbeat.

  There it was. A soft crunch of snow under a boot. And another.

  She squinted against the whiteness of the snow and the contrast of the trees to discern a figure moving toward them.

  Suddenly, Ian eased up the iron grasp of his arm around her shoulders, though he still held her. He laughed bitterly.

  “Ger?” he called out. “The hell you doing? You nearly committed suicide by cop!”

  Ger, now nearer and more easily recognized, broke into an easy jog to join them. He took one look at Trisha and immediately reached for her and pulled her into his arms.

  “Sorry, Ian,” he replied, and Trisha found she had no desire to move her head from where it rested against his chest where she could hear the deep, comforting rumbling of his speech. “I just…I just wanted to keep an eye on you two. This investigation has my hackles up.”

  There was a brief, heavy silence between the brothers, and Trisha glanced up at Ger. She couldn’t help but feel a flutter of desire through her body and down to her toes as she studied his strong, clean jawline, classic features, and golden eyes.

  Then she saw it. Down and to the left. He was hiding something. She had begun to suspect something at Boyer’s General Store, but now she knew that he was hiding something that had to do with this investigation.

  “You’re the woodsman,” Ian said, shrugging his shoulders. “Do you notice anything about this place?”

  Trisha gently pulled away from Ger and stood back, watching him, her heart pounding with an undefined anxiety.

  “It’s pretty easy to find,” he said thoughtfully. “Pretty much a straight shot from the road.”

  “How can you tell?” she asked. “We needed coordinates and a GPS to get here!”

  Oh God, there it was again. Down and to the left. The lying glance.

  “It’s just a way you can recognize a line through the trees if you hunt and hike enough,” Ger replied, looking away from her.

  “Would any woodsman be able to find this ‘line’?” she asked, now watching Ian’s reaction to Ger’s words.

  Ger shot a quick glance at her and looked away again. “I think you’d have to be a fairly experienced…woodsman and fairly familiar with the area. Probably have grown up here.”

  “We’re exactly a twenty-minute drive triangulated between Elkville and Blue Moon,” Trisha said, feeling vindicated about her theory of the killer’s home base, and feeling terrible that she was right. “The killer has to be someone either from or currently living long-term in one of these two towns.”

  Ger bit his lip and looked down, and Trisha’s heart fell into a dark, black place as she realized why she was so anxious.

  This beautiful man before her, this man who could make her body sing and her heart bloom warm and bright, this man was beginning to fit the profile of the Butcher of Bangor. That would make his brother his accomplice.

  She feared she was being played by two men she was falling for but could not trust.

  * * * *

  The ride back to Elkville was silent, but it was a different silence than before. Trisha was completely aware of Ian’s worried mood. If the white knuckles on the steering wheel weren’t a dead giveaway, then the microfidgets and uneven quick breaths as his thoughts worked in overtime were the neon sign saying “Worried.”

  Ger’s jeep behind them gave her an odd feeling of being followed in more than one sense. All she could see now in the falling darkness was the blinding glare of the headlights. She looked back out the window. Fourteen minutes to the motel if Ian’s driving distance estimates earlier had been correct.

  Transportation was an idea in this case that seemed to nag at her. Transportation to find the victims. Transportation to move the victims to the kill site or the ritual site. Transportation to dump the remains. Transportation to live a seemingly ordinary life. The UNSUB’s car would be an important piece of his modus operandi. But also, there was more than the car. There were the actual moments where he was carrying the body himself. The physicality of that bothered her. It didn’t fit with the profile that was growing in her mind. It meant that if the killer deviated from the profile, he would have to be tall and strong and athletic…like Ger.

  She started in her seat, the thought so terrible and disorienting.

  “What’s up?” Ian asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied, settling back down. “Just, some things aren’t making sense yet. They were, and now they’re not, and I don’t like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The profile was falling into place perfectly, and now, I’m not so sure. And, it’s not a case of fitting evidence to theory. It’s just…not working.”

  Ian nodded but said nothing more as they pulled into the parking lot of the motel. Trisha got out and began walking toward her room, when she stopped dead in her tracks.

  The door to her room was creaking back and forth on its hinges. Long scratches marred the wood by the knob, and several of the lower panels were splintered as if it had been kicked, or something had been thrown against it repeatedly. The metal of the doorknob itself was dented by teeth marks, and the wood of the jamb chewed away.

  “What the fuck?” Trisha exclaimed, drawing her gun and carefully moving forward.

  “Trisha!” Ger cried, jumping out of his SUV. “Don’t go in there!”

  “Stay back!” she yelled back over her shoulder. The last thing she needed was a civilian getting hurt in the middle of this if whatever the fuck did this to her door was still in there.

  Ian was by her side, silently moving in perfect sync with her, gun drawn as well. Together, they burst into the room, covering each other, then racing to check the bathroom, closet, and under the bed, calling “Clear!” when the room proved to be empty.

  Empty now.

  But the calling card was clear enough.

  Blood was smeared all over the mirrors and paintings and walls in the room. The television screen bore the cryptic threat, “Wanna play CSI, bitch?” The bedding was shredded with streaks of blood everywhere. Her suitcase and all the drawers had been emptied, their contents chewed and ripped up beyond repair.

  The smell of something putrid filled the air, and Trisha gagged as they discovered a pile of rotting meat on the radiator. The thought that she couldn’t identify whether the meat was animal or human was the final straw.

  Trisha began to shake, her teeth chattering, and her thoughts and vision narrowing to a dark, black tunnel with a single pinpoint of light at the end.

  “She’s going into shock.” She heard Ger’s words as he wrapped his arms around her and effortlessly picked her up to cradle her.

  Ian was communicating with the crackling noises over his radio, but Trisha was too fuzzy and focused on the painful pounding of her heart to understand anything.

  “I’m taking her back to our place,” Ger said, his speech a warm rumble against her body. “She’ll be safe there.”

  “I’ll meet you back there later,” Ian said, turning to him. “I just called the boys in to get this catalogued and cleaned up. Fucker wants to play CSI, we’ll CSI his ass right into jail.”

  “You won’t find anything,” Trisha heard herself say faintly. Everything seemed faraway. This couldn’t have happened to her. The closest she ever got to the killers had been the courtroom. This was personal. This was about her. This was life and death.

  “What?” Ian asked.

  “This is a game,” she replied, her
voice and thoughts automatically manufactured by practice and instinct, her ability to focus and be in the present drowned by the flat terror of being too close to a killer who knew her name, knew her face, and knew she was coming for him. “He won’t have left any clues. That’s the whole CSI comment. It’s ironic. He is reminding me we have no physical evidence to connect to him, and all we have is me, my analysis, expertise…and guesses.”

  “Shhh, don’t cry, sweetheart,” Ger murmured, kissing her forehead, and it was only then that she realized tears were pouring down her face and that she was shaking from sobs.

  Ian came over to her, cocooning her between him and his brother, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek with a tenderness that shocked her.

  “We will catch this fucker,” he said solemnly, his eyes burning into hers. “Together, Trisha.”

  Trisha tried to smile, but she found all she could do was cry harder.

  Because what if the killer was his brother?

  Chapter 9

  Trisha didn’t even try and fight the way she leaned against Ger as he drove them back to the house he shared with Ian. He had put the console up and belted her into the middle seat, driving with one hand as he encircled her comfortingly with his free arm.

  From time to time, he would lean over and kiss the top of her head. The worst part was that all of it felt so nice. It felt right. It felt like all kinds of things Trisha had never felt before.

  The even worse part of the worst part was that it wasn’t enough to drive the growing suspicions from her mind.

  From the beginning, Ger had been so intently focused on her, on seducing her, on trying to draw her into his warm personal orbit, eclipsing the sun and everything else in a haze of desire and comfort that tempted her more than anything else ever had. It was almost enough to make her forget for whole moments at a time why she was in Blue Moon, and she couldn’t shake the gut-wrenching fear that it had all been a game for him. He was trying to distract her from paying too much attention to the wrong things, like his other activities.

  How else could he have known exactly where the dump site was that she and Ian had gone to visit? Why else would Ian be so insistent on trying to divert her from investigating in Blue Moon? Maybe her initial instincts about that man Perk in Boyer’s General Store had been off, and Ger was confronting him about keeping quiet about something he knew or had seen. Who else, besides Ian, knew exactly where she was staying, even what room? The tryst last night in front of her door had given him all the information he had needed.

  He was strong enough to carry a body, an experienced woodsman to find his way in and out of remote locations, and she suspected from her limited exposure that there were quite a few fucked-up dynamics in his family. He seemed never to have left Blue Moon, to have a kind of oddly peaceful acceptance of living out his life here. His calmness and confidence absolutely matched up with the profile of a highly organized killer, which the Butcher of Bangor certainly was. Maybe he had dumped the last body closer to home in a panic because he was worried Ian was beginning to suspect.

  And yet…and yet, it still didn’t fit quite right. Profiles had variations, but there was a remorseless logic about how certain maladies of the mind and pathological behaviors tended to manifest and execute themselves. Ger fit the profile of the killer almost perfectly, but almost didn’t count in this business. Exactitude got convictions.

  She sighed, exhausted from the physical exertion of the shock that was finally ebbing away.

  “We’re almost home, honey,” Ger said. “I’ll call some folks and get you some clothes you can wear until we can take you shopping.”

  “Thanks,” was all she could manage to say. Tears had sprung to her eyes again at the warmth and caring in his voice. His body was strong and warm and solid against hers, and he made her feel cared for and cherished, but in a way that took nothing away from an understanding and respect for the independent woman she was.

  “We’re coming into downtown Blue Moon,” he said, turning his SUV carefully down narrow old roads paved with cobblestones. “Well, it’s as much of a downtown as a four-hundred-year-old fishing hamlet can manage.”

  “It’s amazing,” Trisha said, sitting up to get a better look out the windows. Even though darkness had fallen, old gas lamps lined the streets, and colonial clapboard houses and small storefronts were packed in closely together. The snow was piled in small glaciers along either side of the street, but the sidewalks were completely clear. Old multipaned windows glowed warmly with lamplight, and yet the darkness of the late winter afternoon seemed to hang heavily on the town.

  “Why are some of the chimneys painted white with a black stripe around the top?” she asked, noticing almost half the houses had that feature.

  “It was a political statement during the American Revolution,” Ger replied, slowing down and pulling up in front of a well-preserved gray-blue colonial with a flat front, red shutters, and a red door. “If you were loyal to the king, you painted your chimney that way.”

  “The things you learn,” Trisha said with a laugh, shaking her head a little.

  “There was even a revolutionary battle here in Blue Moon,” Ger added, scooping her up from the seat and carrying her over the snowbank, gently setting her down on the front step as he fished for the key. “A British ship had sailed up the Penobscot River from Bangor and made it all the way out here to Blue Moon Harbor. The local rebel militia saw the ship and went to man the single cannon that was stationed on the cliffs above the town. A single shot was fired. It missed the boat—widely. But, it was enough to convince the British that they didn’t want to mess with Blue Moon. And that, my love, is the epic Battle of Blue Moon that doesn’t appear in any textbook.”

  “Epic, indeed,” Trisha said between gasps of laughter. She couldn’t help it. She shouldn’t be charmed by a suspect. She shouldn’t be laughing at his easy stories. Hell, she shouldn’t be staying in his house. If it did turn out to be him, then he’d have a clear case of entrapment for his appeal.

  Shit, she had to stop thinking like this, playing the chess game out so far ahead. One move at a time was the way you built the strategy. Playing from the conclusion backward was overconfident and let the suspect play you. She took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold.

  “Welcome home, love,” Ger said, taking her hand.

  * * * *

  Ger felt his heart swell with love as he saw his woman—their woman—standing in the small entry of their home. Even before he flipped on the switch to the small antique brass chandelier, her flaming hair seemed to cast off its own brightness.

  He took off her coat, relishing the chance to touch her again, to peel off those layers that stood between him and her petal-soft skin. Her scent was driving him crazy, the musky smell of desire she was giving off mixing with cinnamon fear and smoke to create an irresistible combination. Every instinct he had, animal and human, told him that she belonged to him, to Ian, to this new creation of the three of them that would come into being once the last lines had been crossed and touches became irrevocable.

  There was a clattering sound from the kitchen, and he froze, instinctively pulling Trisha behind him. He felt a flicker of irritation as she stepped right back to his side, gun drawn. He had to take a deep breath and remember she didn’t know just how capable he was of defending both of them. Then again, that was a bit of a problem. He didn’t want to shift in front of her unless he had no choice. Still, even as a human, his instincts and strength were better than hers.

  He drew in a long breath, trying to catch any smells that might provide a clue. He had been so focused on Trisha’s scent and breathing it in, he had shut out everything else. Now he could smell clearly and think clearly.

  It was the smell of meat, slow-roasted. Herbs. Bleach. Drugstore hand lotion. Ah. Now he knew.

  “Relax,” Ger said, easing his posture and smiling down at Trisha.

  She looked up at him suspiciously, and he realized she was the type that always wanted
to know why.

  “Only one roast chicken smells like the way my mother makes it,” he explained with a grin. “I’ll bet she’s in the kitchen.”

  “I can hear you!” Barbara McDade called from the kitchen.

  Trisha sagged and put her gun away, biting down on her lip as if to keep some particularly nasty remarks to herself. Ger couldn’t help himself. She looked so haggard suddenly, as if she had just seen one thing too many today. He gathered her up in his arms and ran his hands soothingly up and down her back.

  She was so small compared to him, and yet every curve and shape fit against him perfectly. He could feel her breasts and her hips against him, and he had to swallow hard to keep from sweeping her up the stairs and making love to her right then and there. Mother was here. He’d have to deal with her first.

  With a final rub, he took Trisha’s hand, thrilled when she didn’t resist, and led her into the kitchen.

  “Wow!” Trisha exclaimed, turning around to take it all in. “This is one helluva kitchen!”

  “Designed it myself,” Ger said proudly, letting go of her and going over to his mother to drop a quick kiss on her weathered cheek. “Took a couple of months from start to finish, but I built all the cabinetry myself and managed to preserve the original crown moldings and parts of the original walls. Hello, Mother.”

  “Ger, honey,” Barbara said, patting him on the cheek and smiling worriedly up at him, her gaze flickering over to Trisha. “I heard that you and Ian had been out in the cold all day, so I thought I’d bring you dinner. I know you boys don’t cook much, and I was right when I looked at your fridge. You don’t have nothing in there to eat.”

  “That’s sweet of you, thanks,” Ger replied, moving back to stand close to Trisha.

  “I didn’t think you’d be having guests,” Barbara added with unexpected acid. “I’m sure I hope there’s enough.”