The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  Simmered? Yes. Boiled? That, too. The Butcher heated his blood.

  He blamed the bloody hands.

  “I want him.” The words rushed over his lips, much like the air now pouring out of the car vents, dry and chilled. “And I’m going to get him.”

  Lottie jammed the car in reverse. “I’m liking you more and more, Pretty Boy.”

  As they drove to the station, Hayden knew both he and Lottie weren’t done for the night. People like them didn’t call it quits when the sun went down. “Dinner?”

  Lottie shot him a half smile. “You got a half dozen women back in the station and even that pretty young medical examiner we just met who’d shit in Macy’s front window to have dinner with you, and you want to wine and dine an old bag like me?”

  “Yes.”

  A frown tugged the smile off her lips. “If you’re up to ordering in and going over case notes in my office, you got a date, and while you’re ordering dinner, why don’t you order us a witness? Our lives would be a whole lot easier if we could find somebody who’s seen this butchering SOB in action.”

  That low simmer bubbled in Hayden’s gut. “We have one.”

  Chapter Three

  Tuesday, June 9, 9:30 p.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  He raised the crimson-filled glass to the star-studded sky outside his office window and toasted the gods other people believed in.

  “To power,” he said. “And to those of us who have it.”

  He swirled the glass of lush, red liquid.

  When he’d taken Shayna Thomas’s life, he’d taken her power.

  It had been almost twenty-four hours, but heat still curled about him, warmed him. Tongues of flames licked his insides as he thought about that knife going in and out, in and out.

  He tilted the glass, allowing a few precious drops of Shayna Thomas’s blood to land on his semi-erect penis. Those few drops furthered his arousal.

  Power. He slicked it over himself.

  There’s power, power, wondrous working power in the blood…

  The hymn from the steepled building near his childhood home in the seediest section of Las Vegas pulsed through his head. He saw his neighbors—the whores who reeked of heartless sex and the users and abusers who smelled of despair—singing and praying for power from above to mend their pathetic lives. He’d been at the church, a skinny kid with a bad limp, outside the window watching and calling them fools.

  Power came from within.

  He fully recognized that at age twelve when he’d reached into a place that went deeper than his soul and made his first kill, taking power from those who controlled him, from his whore of a mother and from the john of hers who used his asshole like a pincushion.

  Those had been his first two kills. There had been many since, and there would be at least one more. He stared at the photograph he’d centered on the windowsill to catch the glow of moonlight.

  His hand pumped faster. He pictured red spilling out of his latest kill’s body. He pictured Shayna’s wavy dark hair, creamy white skin, brown eyes that he pretended were green.

  His body jerked and he bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. Spasms rocked him as wave after wave of heat blasted through his veins. It was minutes, maybe hours later that the heat subsided to a nice cocoon of warmth.

  Yes, the blood empowered, but in the end, it soothed.

  He took a tissue from his pocket and wiped. After zipping his pants, he folded the tissue and blotted the creamy drops that had dribbled to the floor.

  Just as he stood, the door of his office swung open, the lights blazed on, and an off-tune rendition of “Moon River” warbled through the room.

  He blinked away the bright light, snatched the small glass of blood he’d placed on the table, and slipped it behind his back.

  “Oh, you scared me!” Glenda, the cleaning woman, took a step back, her hand to her chest. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here at this hour. Would you like me to come back later?”

  Stupid bitch. She was supposed to clean from six to nine Wednesdays and Fridays. Six to nine. Wednesdays. Fridays. She wasn’t following the schedule. Anger burst behind his eyes.

  But he kept his words calm. “No. I’m leaving.”

  When he reached the door, she called out, “Excuse me, is this yours?”

  He turned and looked at the picture she’d picked up from the windowsill, the one of a smiling, living Katrina Erickson. Holding the blood that should have been Katrina’s, he walked toward the cleaning lady, took the photo, and left.

  * * *

  Tuesday, June 9, 9:30 p.m.

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  A whistle slid over Lottie’s puckered lips. “This is the witness you were talking about? A regular little Miss America.”

  Hayden stacked the empty Thai takeout containers and put them in the trash can next to Lottie’s desk. Then he turned to see her studying the eight-by-ten glossy of the woman he’d been hunting for five months. “She’s a broadcast journalist last working in Reno, but she did some modeling in her college days. Name’s Katrina Erickson.” He ran his finger along the right side of the photo. “Three years ago the Butcher attacked her.”

  “Three years? I thought the first Butcher attack occurred six months ago.”

  “That was the first murder. When I started researching similar cases, I discovered Erickson’s attack. A significant number of stab wounds. Folded hands. Broken mirrors. A near carbon copy.”

  “Except Miss America didn’t die.”

  “Her attacker stabbed her twenty-four times with an eight-inch, double-edged knife. We believe he thought she was dead, and she would have been if not for an anonymous nine-one-one call directing police to check her home. She was stitched up and underwent inpatient rehab for a number of months, but the day she left the hospital, she disappeared. No one has seen her since.”

  “You think the Butcher found her?”

  “No. If he had, he would have left her body where others could find it. His killings are brutal and meant to be seen—and admired—by others. Katrina Erikson is still alive but off-grid. She’s strong, resourceful, and smart. I’m fairly confident she’s not being held against her will but in hiding by choice.”

  Lottie turned from the photo of Katrina Erickson to a four-foot corkboard on the wall of her office. More than fifty photos dotted the surface, all of Shayna Thomas, all predominately red. “I don’t blame her. The Butcher’s one sick SOB.” She leaned back in her chair and propped her bare feet on her desk. “Got a handle on where Miss America is hanging out these days?”

  He took out a large manila envelope from his briefcase and tipped its contents onto the desk. Out tumbled a brochure from a motorcycle shop in New Mexico, a picture of Katrina taken seven days after her attack, and a small pendant in the shape of a fairy.

  Lottie looked skeptical. “You gotta explain this one.”

  He pointed to the brochure. “Katrina Erickson loved scenic rides, and before her disappearance, she was a member of a motorcycle club. Small community of hardcore biker enthusiasts. I’m hoping one of them will come through and admit to seeing her.”

  Lottie pointed to the close-up photo, which showed a fresh wound snaking from Katrina’s right eye to the upper portion of her right ear. “What’s this all about?”

  “Katrina Erickson is beautiful, and, as a broadcaster, she took great pains with her appearance. It’s possible she’ll try to have this lone facial scar surgically reduced. We’ve contacted hundreds of plastic surgeons. Nothing yet.”

  The police sergeant studied the fairy. “And this?”

  He picked up the silver-winged pendant with the bright green stone. “Tourmaline jewelry. Katrina Erickson’s hobby. Before her attack, she was the creator of a line of handmade jewelry called the Fairy Shoppe. Made quite a bit of money at it. So it’s possible she’s making and selling jewelry somewhere. I’ve been jewelry shopping but haven’t found anything yet.”

  “Motorcycle clubs, plas
tic surgeons, and little glass fairies. This is all we have to help us track the only woman to survive the Butcher’s knife?” Lottie looked at the ceiling. “Lord, help us.”

  The fairy pendant slipped from his fingers and clattered to the desk. No, Lord, help another beautiful, dark-haired broadcast journalist because he finally figured out what was bothering him about the mirrors. The Butcher, who craves order and routine, hadn’t broken the final two mirrors in Shayna Thomas’s house. He hadn’t finished the job, which means he wasn’t going to wait a month between killings.

  The Butcher could and would strike at any time.

  * * *

  Wednesday, June 10, 12:30 a.m.

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  Hayden left the station around midnight and checked in to his hotel room. He looked at the mound of pillows on the bed and the small bottle of lavender spray and the relaxation CD on the nightstand, all designed to help hotel guests slumber long and peacefully. Not him. Not tonight. Frankly, not ever.

  You’re a friggin’ freak of nature, one of his bunkmates had said the first week at boot camp. Normal people don’t function on three hours of sleep, Reed, not with the hell we’re going through.

  Maybe that’s why he was so successful at chasing abominations of the human condition. Because he was one. He could go weeks with only a few hours of sleep per night, which was a good thing because tonight he had no plans of sleeping.

  After loosening his collar, he called up his folders on Katrina Erickson and clicked on a video file. A picture of the former broadcast journalist at KTTL-TV in Reno popped onto the screen, and the audio streamed.

  “Using a metal spoon he filed to a razor-sharp point, convicted felon Devon Morales escaped from the Nevada State Prison at dawn this morning,” Katrina was saying in the clear, authoritative voice she used when on the air.

  This broadcast clip, one of her “Justice for All” reports, was shot in mid-February four years ago and featured Katrina standing in near-blizzard conditions outside the prison gates. Even with her hair flying in the frosty winds and her nose red from the cold, Katrina Erickson was exquisite.

  Hayden stilled the video stream, and for a moment he stopped studying the victim.

  And appreciated the woman.

  He’d learned somewhere that models and actors had a symmetry to their faces that drew people to them. That must be the case with Erickson, because he was drawn to her, to the perfect order of her features, to her heart-shaped face softened by heavy, brown waves of hair, to the fair skin of her graceful neck and spray of freckles across her nose, and to full, pink lips and intense green eyes.

  Eyes that had seen a butcher.

  The beautiful woman fled. The victim returned.

  Hayden wanted Katrina Erickson, needed her. She alone had witnessed the Broadcaster Butcher in action. And she alone survived.

  In his efforts to track her down, Hayden spent the past five months studying everything about her. He created spreadsheets of people who may have wanted to harm her, including subjects of her “Justice for All” reports, and he personally interviewed dozens of people who knew her.

  Her coworkers said Katrina was a top-notch journalist and on the fast track to landing a job with one of the networks. “Katrina clearly had a mission, and she had the fire and the smarts to get there,” the general manager at KTTL-TV had said.

  Those who knew her as a youth were blunter. “At times my sister could be explosive,” her younger brother had admitted to Hayden after a good deal of prompting and patience. “The night she ran away from home, she got in a fight with our mother and ended up stabbing me.” As proof, her bother lifted the cuff of his shirt and showed him a raised scar in the shape of a check mark on his right wrist.

  “Katrina was feisty as a kid, a real scrapper who got more than her fair share of fat lips and black eyes,” the pastor of her childhood church said. “We prayed for her often.”

  So why had a scrappy, ambitious, talented, successful woman who could clearly take care of herself disappeared off the face of the earth? And, more importantly, where was she?

  Hayden turned back to his computer screen and called up his e-mail, clicking on the one from Hatch Hatcher. His teammate had been digging into a tourmaline jewelry store Hayden spotted last week online.

  Hatch’s message read: Store ships out of Durango, Colorado. I talked to a local postal clerk who said he had a customer who frequently mailed small, jewelry-size boxes. But when I e-mailed him a photo of Katrina Erickson, the clerk couldn’t give a positive ID. He said it was hard to tell because the woman always wore dark glasses, scarves, and long-sleeved shirts. I’d offer to head to Durango, but this is your party. Let me know when you need me to RSVP.

  * * *

  Wednesday, June 10, 7:30 a.m.

  Mancos, Colorado

  Hayden couldn’t imagine Katrina Erickson in a town where elk outnumbered residents, but after his phone conversation with Hatch, he dug into the Durango lead and discovered the woman with the online jewelry store lived in a remote cabin in Mancos, a small mountain town in southwestern Colorado and the heart of elk country.

  Hayden pulled his car off Highway 184 and drove along a twisting dirt road through the dense pine forest. Winter and spring had been dry in the mountain states, and the air smelled of dust and drought. After four miles he came to a small A-frame cabin, owned by one Joseph Bernard, a veteran who’d served two tours in Vietnam and claimed a chestful of medals. Records from the VA showed he was legally blind, had battled and defeated colon cancer one year ago, and had a live-in aide, Kate Johnson. Was Kate Johnson an alias for Katrina Erickson? That simmer Lottie talked about started to bubble.

  The minute Hayden stepped out of his car he spotted the first wire. Seconds later he spied two others, one along the front of the house three inches above the ground and the other across the lower-level windows. Trip wires, but, interestingly enough, there’d been no attempt to camouflage their presence. Given the remote location, he could be looking at an individual suffering from paranoia, irrational fears, PTSD, or, more likely, a combination. Hayden knocked on the front door and called out, “FBI.”

  A tufted-ear squirrel in a pine tree near the door made a series of sharp clicking sounds, almost as if scolding him for disturbing inhabitants of this remote part of the forest.

  When no one answered, he made his way around the side of the house, inspecting the ground before each step so as not to trigger any of the wires. Out back he got another surprise: a pile of aluminum cans with bullet holes. He unholstered his Sig 45 and flattened himself against the back of the cabin. A low hiss struck the air followed by a pop.

  He spun just in time to see the wooden doors of a shed ten yards east of the cabin splinter and blow. Dust and debris rained through the air.

  “What the—” Something slammed the back of Hayden’s head.

  * * *

  “Did I git him?”

  Kate gaped at the man below. Dirt and splinters of wood covered the dark suit that stretched across his broad shoulders and long legs. A deep red stain soaked through the collar of his shirt, and next to him tongues of fire licked at the doorframe of Smokey’s toolshed. He claimed to be with the FBI. Isn’t that what he’d shouted when he banged on the door?

  Kate swallowed the boulder in her throat. “Exactly what happened down there?”

  “I wired the shed with C-4,” Smokey Joe said. “Not enough to kill, just enough to slow down the enemy so we can take off. Now, did I git him with the log?”

  “You got him.” Oh God, did Smokey get him. Blood pooled in a dark red disk on the thick carpet of pine needles beneath the man’s head.

  “Is he down?” Smokey asked.

  “Down.” And possibly dead. Kate steadied her hands on the hood of Smokey’s car.

  She should have run. She should never have involved Smokey in something this dangerous. They’d spent the past twenty-four hours at target practice and “safeguarding” Smokey’s house with security s
ensors and booby traps. What had she been thinking?

  “Okay, time to git.” Smokey fumbled for the door handle of his car, which sat on the mountain road that snaked above the cabin.

  Kate didn’t move, her gaze glued to the tongues of flame wicking a corner of the shed below. “The shed’s on fire, it might spread.” And kill the man if he wasn’t already dead.

  The rainless spring left the ground cover dry and brittle, prime tinder for the sparks popping off the shed. She couldn’t leave that man down there with the fire. She was already responsible for the deaths of six women. “Stay here, Smokey. I’m going down to make sure he’s okay and put out the fire.”

  She scrambled down the side of the mountain, gravity yanking her along pin-sharp needles and rocks. Her feet landed with a knee-jarring thud. A grumble sounded above her along with footsteps. She looked up and cried out, “Stay put, Smokey! You can’t—”

  Too late. Smokey was tumbling down the mountain in a cloud of silky dust and twigs. He landed at her feet, stood, and jammed a finger in her face. “Ain’t no one gonna tell me what I can and can’t do.” He shifted the waistband of his baggy trousers. “You git the man, and I’ll git the fire.”

  Kate wanted to tackle Smokey Joe and tie him to a pine tree, but she and the pine tree would most likely suffer injury in the process. Plus they didn’t have time. The flames now licked at the shake roof of the shed. “The hose is ten paces forward, five left,” she said. “Shed will be to your right. Aim at two o’clock.”

  She rushed to the man on the ground. He was deathly still except for the shallow rise of his chest and the line of crimson trickling from the side of his head. A red spark popped off the shed and landed next to his shiny Italian leather lace-up. She crushed the ember with her palm and jammed her hands beneath his wide shoulders, the jacket weave fine and smooth against her trembling fingers.