Dark and Twisted Reads: All the Pretty GirlsA Perfect EvilBone Cold (A Taylor Jackson Novel)

by J. T. Ellison

  They found her on the floor beside her bed, knees to her chest, rocking and weeping. “I tried to stop him!” she cried when she saw Ben. “I tried. See—” She pointed.

  Ben looked in the direction she indicated. She had hurled a vase at the dresser. The crash they’d heard had been the vase connecting with the items on the top of the dresser: her toiletries, framed photos, a porcelain figurine.

  He went to her, crouched down and drew her into his arms. She shook with the force of her despair, her body frail and birdlike in his arms.

  “I see, Mom,” he murmured, voice thick. “It’s okay now, sweetheart, everything’s going to be okay.”

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, Ben crossed the nursing-home parking lot, heading to his car. He sighed and looked up at the black sky, heart heavy and aching. He hated to see his mother this way, hated to see her failing so fast.

  He was losing her. One day in the not so distant future, he would come to see her and she wouldn’t recognize him. Her world would be populated by strangers, caregivers and menacing figures like the one tonight.

  Why her? he wondered. She had worked so hard her whole life: to give him a good home; a normal childhood despite his having no father; to make sure he felt loved. She had been not only his mother, but his champion and friend as well. She didn’t deserve this.

  Ben swallowed hard. His uncle had died a few years back and although they hadn’t been close, he had been family. When his mother went, he would be alone. No family. No one to call his own.

  He thought of Anna suddenly. Her image filled his head and senses, and a smile touched his mouth. He had called her the other morning, immediately after Detective Malone had left. He’d told her about his home being broken into and about the package that had been left for him.

  She had been shaken. Angry. Not so much at him as at the situation. He had promised her he wouldn’t rest until he had discovered which of his patients was to blame, he had filled her in on the progress he had made so far.

  He hadn’t spoken with her since. He missed her.

  Ben glanced at his watch and saw with regret that it was too late to call her. He wished it wasn’t. He would have liked to talk with her about his mother. His feelings. She would have understood. That’s the way she was.

  He was falling in love with her. It seemed impossible—they had only known each other a couple weeks. But it was true. It both exhilarated and frightened him, made him feel like running for cover—and walking on air.

  He reached his car and saw that someone had tucked a flyer under the driver’s-side windshield wiper. Ben yanked it out and stopped short.

  Not a flyer. A message:

  You’re falling in love with her.

  She’s going to die tonight.

  Ben went cold. Fear grabbed him by the throat and he began to sweat.

  Not Anna. No, not her.

  He unlocked the car and slid inside. Simultaneously, he shoved the key in the ignition and reached for his cell phone. The engine roared to life and he punched in Anna’s number.

  It rang once. Twice. Three times. Heart thundering, he waited, counting the rings, praying. Anna didn’t pick up. Neither did her answering machine.

  Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  She’s going to die tonight.

  Cursing under his breath, Ben threw the sedan into gear and tore out of the parking lot, the back end fish-tailing, spewing gravel. He had to warn her. Protect her. If she wasn’t home, he would stand sentinel at her front gate until she returned. He wasn’t about to let this maniac harm a hair on her head. And if he did, Ben would rip him apart at the seams. He swore that he would.

  CHAPTER 37

  Monday, January 29

  11:50 p.m.

  Anna awakened out of a deep sleep. She opened her eyes, instantly terrified. Her bedside light was off, her bedroom bathed in total darkness. She stared at the room’s corners, the darkest and deepest of the shadows, her imagination taking flight and creating monsters with names she knew.

  Kurt.

  Immobilized by fear, she lay stone still, listening, heart lodged in her throat. The silence deafened. It roared. Marshaling her every ounce of control, she turned her head toward the nightstand and the glowing dial of her alarm clock. Midnight. Almost.

  From somewhere in the apartment came a sound. Unrecognizable. Uninvited.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Her terror took shape, settling over her like a leaden blanket, and she struggled to breathe under its suffocating weight. She began to sweat. Her pulse to race. She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus—on pulling air in and pushing it out, with each breath attempting to wrest control of her body from the grip of fear.

  Finally, her body responded. As quietly as possible, she shifted onto her side and reached for the bedside phone.

  It wasn’t there.

  She remembered. She had taken a call from Dalton shortly before bed. She had carried the portable into the bathroom and left it there.

  A cry rose to her throat. She fought it back, struggling against what she knew was irrational. Tonight was no different than the hundreds of other nights she had awakened certain Kurt had found her.

  He hadn’t. Like all those other nights, a dream had awakened her. An ugly memory, an old terror. Gone but not forgotten.

  Climb out of bed, she told herself. Walk to the bedroom door and through it, retrieve the phone. She would feel safe then, she told herself. She would go back to sleep. Everything would be fine.

  Anna slid back the blankets, eased into a sitting position, then swung her legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold beneath her bare feet and she shivered.

  Too cold, she realized. She glanced toward the French doors that led to the balcony and courtyard below. The curtain stirred. She stared at the filmy fabric; the rustling came again, followed by a thread of cold, damp air that slithered across her feet and curled around her ankles.

  The French door was open.

  With a cry of pure terror she darted for the bedroom doorway. As she neared it, the door slammed shut and strong arms circled her from behind, one at her middle, one at her throat. He hauled her against his chest and dragged her backward, toward the bed.

  The arm at her throat tightened, cutting off her air. She clawed at it, pinpoints of light dancing before her eyes. Weakening from lack of oxygen, she thrashed and kicked out, her attempts feeble at best.

  His grip loosened, but even as she gobbled in a lungful of air she found herself being pushed face first onto the bed. In a flash he was on top of her, a hand pressed to the back of her neck, a knee digging into her lower back, immobilizing her. He tore at her nightclothes, as if in a kind of feeding frenzy, making wet guttural sounds as he did.

  A litany of pleadings, denials and prayers played through her head, deafening and desperate. He meant to rape her. The way those other women had been raped. Then he was going to kill her. The way those other two women had been killed. Redheads. Just like her.

  The back of her gown gave. The ripping sound sawed along her nerve endings. Anna started to sob, the tears bubbling up out of her in increasing intensity. He went for her panties, curling his fingers around the waistband and yanking them away.

  In one move, he flipped her over and shoved her legs apart. She saw then that he was masked in one of the pale, expressionless masks favored by the Mardi Gras krewe riders. She sensed his smile, his revelry in her terror, her pain. She felt his pure evil.

  “Ready or not,” he muttered, “here I come.”

  Her thoughts went careening back in time. Back twenty-three years. Timmy lay in an unmoving heap on the cot. Now it was her turn. Kurt turned and started for her, wire cutters in his hand, lips twisted into a cold smile.

  “Ready or not, here I come.”

  A scream rose in Anna’s throat. Dragged from the center of her being, it ripped through her bedroom, echoing off the walls and into the darkness. It was followed by another, then another. Her
attacker froze. He shifted his masked face and for the first time looked her directly in the eyes. His were orange. Like a tiger’s. Or a devil’s.

  She screamed again. He leaped off her and was gone, out the way he had come—through the French doors, over the balcony and down.

  Still screaming, the sounds ripping from her like a car alarm gone haywire, she scrambled off the bed and raced out of the bedroom and to her front door. Forgetting her nakedness, she yanked it open.

  Dalton was there, in the hall outside her door. With a cry, she fell headlong into his arms.

  CHAPTER 38

  Tuesday, January 30

  12:45 a.m.

  Forty minutes later, Anna sat huddled on her couch, her hands curled around a cup of hot herbal tea, teeth chattering. Dalton sat beside her, Bill hovered protectively behind, both their expressions grim. From her bedroom came the sounds of Malone, a couple of other detectives and the evidence collection team, who had arrived only a few minutes ago. They would dust for fingerprints, Malone had said. Look for any other kind of latent or trace evidence.

  Malone had arrived first, within minutes of Dalton’s call. Still hysterical, she had relayed what she had been able to, enough to give him the gist of what had happened. He’d called a couple of other detectives from his district and then the evidence team.

  Anna looked down at herself. She wore Dalton’s sweater and a pair of sweatpants he had dug out of her dresser for her. She glanced toward the doorway to her bedroom where her tattered nightgown lay in an obscene heap. Her panties lay there also, somewhere nearer the bed.

  Naked. She had been naked when she ripped open her bedroom door and stumbled into Dalton’s arms. A stranger had torn away her garments. He had touched her. Had tried to take by force the most private part of herself.

  She had been saved. Her desperate pleas and prayers had been answered.

  But would she ever feel clean—or safe—again?

  She shuddered, a small whimper slipping past her lips. As if reading her thoughts, Dalton put his arm around her, squeezing gently. She glanced at him; he didn’t speak, he didn’t have to. The love and concern in his eyes said everything she needed to know.

  Malone emerged from the bedroom, the other detectives with him. Anna met his gaze and a calm slipped over her, a feeling of safety. A feeling that with Malone around, nothing bad could touch her. With the feeling came the longing to stand and move into his arms. And have him hold her.

  She would be warm then. She would be safe.

  Without breaking eye contact, he crossed to her. He crouched down in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet, hands resting on his knees. He searched her gaze. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded, though she wasn’t okay. Not by a long shot.

  “Good.” He motioned the other detectives. “Agnew and Davis are going to canvas the building and neighborhood, ring doorbells, see if anyone heard or saw anything.”

  She nodded again, lowering her gaze to his hands, noticing their shape, that is fingers were long, blunt-tipped and immaculately groomed. He had nice hands, she thought. Masculine. Quick, she would bet. Agile.

  “Anna?”

  She returned her gaze to his, cheeks heating. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “He entered your apartment by way of the balcony. I believed he came over the courtyard wall, then scaled the wall to your balcony and its French doors. He broke a pane of glass, reached inside and unlocked the dead bolt.”

  “So much for all those fancy new locks,” Dalton muttered.

  Quentin looked at the other man. “You installed the dead bolt?”

  “Had them installed,” he corrected. “After the finger incident. Actually, I had dead-bolt locks added to every courtyard door in the building.”

  “And I had my locks changed,” Anna whispered. “A lot of good it did me.”

  Quentin returned his attention to her. “I need to ask you a few questions. Think you’re up to that?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Good.”

  He took his spiral from his jacket pocket. “Let’s go through it from the top. Tell me everything you remember, even if you think it’s totally irrelevant. Okay?”

  She nodded, then began, voice halting. She told him about waking up, being frightened, trying to calm herself, then realizing the French door was open.

  “I ran then, toward the door.” Her voice began to shake. “He caught me…he dragged me…back to the…to the—”

  Unable to finish, he helped her out. “The bed, Anna?”

  “Yes.”

  Dalton pulled her closer and Bill laid his hands on her shoulders. She let out a trembling breath, tried to continue but found she couldn’t. The words lodged painfully in her throat even as the events of the night replayed in her head, like reccurring frames of a horror flick, one she couldn’t walk out of.

  “Anna,” Malone murmured, voice gentle but firm, “look at me. Only at me.” She did and as their gazes locked she again experienced a sense of calm move over and through her. “You’re safe now,” he said. “I’m going to keep you safe. But I need your help. Take a deep breath and talk to me.”

  She found the words then, though they sometimes tumbled out of her in a garbled rush, other times in a painfully halting crawl. Never taking her gaze off Malone’s, she relayed how the man had torn off her clothes, the moment she had realized that he meant to rape her, and how she had screamed.

  “You were facedown on the bed the whole time?”

  “No, he…he turned me over.”

  “You saw his face?”

  She shook her head. “He was masked. One of those Mardi Gras masks, like the krewe riders wear. But I saw his eyes. They were orange.”

  Malone frowned. “Orange?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but they were.” She opened her mouth to tell him the rest, then shut it, pressing her trembling lips together.

  Ready or not, here I come.

  She hadn’t said those words aloud in twenty-three years. Not since she had sat across from the FBI agents, a traumatized child clinging to her parents.

  “Go on, Anna. Tell me everything.”

  She took a fortifying breath, then began. “It was Kurt, Quentin. It was him.”

  Dalton squeezed her hand. “Oh, Anna…honey—”

  “It was!” She glanced over her shoulder at Bill, searching for an ally. “It was him. His voice…what he—”

  “Excuse me, Detective?”

  An expression of frustration on his face, Malone turned toward the bedroom doorway and the team of criminalists. “What?” he snapped.

  The other officer looked unconcerned about Malone’s obvious ire. “We’re done in here. If you don’t have anything else, we’ll head back to the lab.”

  “Do that. Call me in the morning.”

  “Will do.” The men headed out, tromping through the center of the living room, not glancing Anna’s way.

  When they had exited the apartment, Malone turned back to her. “Let’s jump forward in time for a moment.” He glanced at his notebook and the notes he had taken earlier, then back up at her. “You screamed and your attacker bolted? He darted out onto your bedroom balcony and went over the side?” She nodded and he went on. “Then you ran from your bedroom to your front door. You yanked it open and Dalton was there, waiting. Is that right?”

  Before she could answer, Dalton jumped in. “I wasn’t waiting. I’d been out—”

  “Walking Judy and Boo,” Bill offered.

  “Our dogs. I opened our apartment door and bent to unleash the babies—”

  “And he heard Anna scream.”

  “Right.”

  Malone shifted his gaze to Bill. “And where were you?”

  “Watching TV.” He paused. “Inside.”

  “Do you always stay behind when Dalton takes your…babies out?”

  Bill stiffened, Anna felt it and glanced apologetically up at him. “Not typically. But Mysteries and Scandals was on and—”<
br />
  “He loves that show,” Dalton murmured. “I didn’t mind going out alone. He’s done it for me hundreds of times.”

  Malone’s gaze didn’t waver from Bill. “Mysteries and Scandals, that’s an E! show, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Bill had grown unnaturally still, and Anna shifted in her seat. “The best-quality fluff.”

  “Cotton candy for your brain.” Malone smiled and shifted his gaze to Anna. “Wasn’t that the network that ran your mother’s interview?”

  Anna’s heart began to pound. She saw what Malone was doing and didn’t like it. Obviously, Dalton did also because his face was flushed with color. “Are you suggesting that Bill—”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” Malone murmured, expression unchanging. “I’m simply trying to get an accurate picture of what happened here tonight. Is that a problem?”

  “Of course not,” Bill said, though with an edge in his voice. “I love Anna. I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  “As would I,” Dalton offered primly.

  “I appreciate that.” Malone looked at Anna. “I’d like to speak with you privately. Would that be possible?”

  She hesitated. “Dalton and Bill are my best friends, there’s nothing I can’t say in front of them.”

  “Of course. However, I have to insist.” He shifted his gaze to the two men. “You understand, fellas. Don’t you?”

  They didn’t. Clearly. She frowned. “Malone—”

  “It’s okay, Anna.” Dalton squeezed her hands, then released them and stood. “The man’s got a job to do. Call us, okay?”

  Bill bent and kissed the top of her head. “We’re right next door. I can sleep on your couch, it’s not a problem.”

  “Or you can sleep on ours,” Dalton offered. “We’re here for you, hon.”

  She thanked them both and watched them go, feeling for all the world like she was being abandoned.

  As if reading her thoughts, Malone murmured, “You can call them right back over. I wanted you to feel free to answer my next questions without an audience.”

  “Why?” she asked defiantly. “Surely you don’t think Dalton or Bill would harm me? Because I can assure you they wouldn’t.”