The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  “I know, Lyla. I know.” He took another step toward her. The girl’s bright pink dress was smeared with her father’s blood. Even if she survived this night, it would haunt her forever.

  Mrs. Sutton burst in from another tunnel, brandishing a butcher knife. “Lyla!”

  The girl raised the knife again. “Stay back.”

  “Oh my little girl…” Mrs. Sutton sobbed.

  Crap. This was not how he planned it. Not that anything in the last hour had gone how he planned it. But this definitely was not on the schedule.

  “Ma’am, I need you to go back upstairs,” Kent encouraged. “Let me get Lyla into custody.”

  But the woman ignored him. “Lyla, honey, I can’t protect you anymore.”

  “I know, Momma,” Lyla sobbed. “I am so sorry.”

  “Don’t be, baby.”

  “Get her to lower the weapon,” Kent whispered, but again Mrs. Sutton acted as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “We talked about this. Someday it was going to have to end, remember?” the woman asked her daughter. Lyla nodded vigorously, wiping tears from her cheek. “The only thing is, Lyla, if the profiler is left alive, they will put me in jail for protecting you, Lyla.”

  Kent’s head jerked around. Bitch.

  “But if they find you both dead,” Carla continued, “then I can have this baby I am carrying and do better by her than I did you.”

  “Really?” Kent commented. “Your kid is accused of being a serial killer and you somehow make it all about you?”

  Neither seemed to notice his outburst as Lyla turned toward him with the knife.

  “That’s right, baby. Just one last one, and then it will be over.”

  As the blood-soaked girl took a step toward him, his flashlight shook. Probably because his hand shook. Could he pull this off?

  “Lyla, do you remember what you asked me in your room? Why I didn’t want to know why you tried to kill yourself?”

  The girl’s feet stalled. “Yes.”

  “You weren’t asking me. You were asking yourself. Do you remember why you wanted to kill yourself?”

  Confusion passed over Lyla’s face.

  “You don’t remember, do you? You don’t remember taking your mom’s Valium or even getting into the tub, do you?”

  “But I did.”

  “No, someone gave you Valium. Someone slit your wrists.”

  Mrs. Sutton’s eyes blazed with fury.

  Oh yeah, bitch, two could play at this game.

  “Mom?” Lyla asked.

  “Honey, he is just trying to confuse you. You know how tricky these police can be. He doesn’t understand how sick you are.”

  Lyla still didn’t move forward. “Did you do that, Mom? Did you try to kill me?”

  Mrs. Sutton wrung her hands, tears streaming down her face. “Only because you wanted it to stop. You begged me to. Remember, when you are in a psychotic break, you can’t remember what happens.”

  “It’s got to end,” Lyla sobbed.

  “Yes, baby. Yes, it does.”

  Kent held his ground as the girl turned to him. “You sent that message from the school. You tried to warn us.”

  Lyla lifted the knife higher, its tip pointed at Kent. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “You don’t remember any of it, though, do you?” Kent asked. “None of it. Not your first kill. Not your last.”

  Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “It’s my fault. It’s me.” She took a step closer. “Tara was making fun of my boots. She said they looked like a possum had farted on them.”

  “But that’s the last thing you remember, Lyla, isn’t it?” Kent probed. “You both walked home by different routes.”

  “I remember seeing red. And wanting her dead. I wanted her dead,” Lyla sobbed.

  “Of course you did,” Kent stated. “That was way rude.”

  “Yes.” Lyla sniffed, menacing the knife toward him. “Yes, it was.”

  * * *

  Nicole heard sirens approach. Finally.

  She could feel Mr. Sutton’s pulse weaken under her fingers. The cut had gone deep, slicing his jugular. Whatever had created these wounds had been large and sharp. And Kent was down there unarmed.

  For being so damned smart he was an idiot at times.

  The EMTs rushed into the house, trying to jockey her out of the way.

  Nicole held on, though. Mr. Sutton couldn’t lose another drop of blood.

  “No, there’s a gusher under my hand,” she said.

  This time the EMT more cautiously took over the pressure as she backed away.

  That was one hell of a wound on his neck.

  And wasn’t Mr. Sutton like six feet tall?

  Oh, crap.

  As the EMTs called after her, she took off at a run down the hallway. Kent had no idea the trouble he was in.

  * * *

  Lyla took another step toward Kent. He swallowed hard. This was the moment of truth. Although sometimes the truth doesn’t always set you free. Sometimes… well, sometimes it got you killed.

  His eyes flickered from the bloody tip of the knife that Lyla was holding to the rather large butcher knife the mother hefted with both hands. These were not the odds he was hoping for.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Kent said to Lyla. “You have a choice.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said as tears coated her eyelashes, making them glisten in the low light.

  “You know what I am going to have to do?” Kent asked.

  Lyla just nodded, biting her lip as she stepped forward and…

  Handed him the knife.

  “Lyla!” Carla shouted. “What are you doing?”

  The knife handle was slick in Kent’s hand as Lyla glared at her mother.

  “What I should have done four years ago,” she said, stepping beside Kent.

  “How dare you!” Carla hissed.

  “Okay,” Kent said before she could build up a head of steam. “I have dealt with some major whack jobs, but you, Carla? You take the cake.”

  Carla stepped to her left, blocking the exit. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”

  Kent positioned Lyla behind him, stepping to his right, keeping out of range, waiting for his moment. Like he said, he should have screwed getting evidence and just gotten Lyla out of this house while the getting was good. But now, now he needed to keep Carla distracted and that butcher knife away from the two of them.

  “How could you hate your daughter so much that you not only killed her proxies but made Lyla believe she had done it?”

  Carla sneered as she stepped to the left. “You try carrying a parasite in your body for nine months.”

  Stepping to the right, Kent met her sneer and raised her. “But you had to carry the baby in order to land the Sutton heir, didn’t you?”

  “Had I known it would ruin my racing career,” The woman’s face contorted with the memory. Her eyes shone brighter than the knife’s blade. The crazy eyes always did. “I never would have poked those holes in the condom.”

  She looked at Lyla, not as her daughter, but as a source of contempt. Kent tried to shield the girl, but her mother’s words were sharp enough to probably slice through the walls.

  “Then to have everyone ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over how beautiful she was, and how fast she could run?” Carla’s eyes narrowed, “She stole them. She stole every good part of me.”

  “Good thing,” Kent said. “Cause you certainly weren’t putting them to much use.”

  Okay, that might have been rattling the cage again a bit too far, as Carla’s cheeks flushed and her knuckles went white against her knife’s handle.

  Kent had to do something, and do it quickly. He only needed to move a few more feet over and he could get Lyla out of the tunnel. The desire wasn’t exactly altruistic. He really could use Nicole and her gun right about now. Where was the detective? You would have thought after their last little adventure that Nicole would have taken “Navigating Convoluted Tunnels 101.”

 
But Carla and that knife were his primary concerns right now.

  “So that was when you decided to kill Lyla? Once she started sprinting?”

  “No,” Carla chuckled. That laugh that serial killers get when you don’t have any idea of how deeply their psychosis goes. “It was an accident, really…”

  Her eyes lost focus as they flicked up and to the left. Kent let her access her memories. The chemical shift within the brain slowed reflex time and he could use that window.

  One more step to the right. One step closer to freedom.

  “I was driving home and saw that blonde hair, swishing back and forth as she walked…” Carla said, her voice trailing off. Then her features sharpened. “How many times had I told her not to walk home alone?” She shouted at Lyla. “How many times?”

  Kent could feel the girl cringe behind him. He gave her hand a squeeze. They would get through this. Preferably with all of their body parts intact. Although that was not a given.

  Carla moved another step. “But would daddy’s little girl get in trouble? Would she miss even a single dessert for disobeying me? So I got out of the car and followed her. I only meant to startle her, scare her, so that she knew why I had the rule.”

  The woman stopped and reversed course. No, no, no.

  “Then what happened?” Kent asked, trying to get her feet to stop moving in the wrong direction.

  A smile, cold and soulless, formed on her lips. She bit down playfully. “I guess I was a little angrier than I thought, and hit her a little harder than I thought.”

  “You mean you thought it was me?” Lyla stepped out from behind Kent. “You thought you hit me?”

  But instead of any sympathy or kindness, Carla’s eyes crackled with a mischief unchecked by sanity. “And it felt good. So good.”

  Kent willed her with his mind to step to the left. Just keep going to the left.

  When her feet moved again, it was to the right. Kent had no choice but to move to the left, away from the exit.

  “But it wasn’t Lyla you killed. It was Tara,” Kent said trying to string her along. Maybe she would work her way around to the other side if he just kept her talking.

  Where in the hell was Nicole, anyway? Seriously?

  “Yes, it was. I got rid of the body down in the basement,” Carla said, flipping the butcher knife around in her hands. “I thought, this is it. I might as well kill Lyla, too, so I put a Valium in her juice box and waited.”

  Another step to the right. Keep going, bitch, just keep going.

  “But once she was unconscious…”

  “You loved me too much to kill me?” Lyla asked, hope so clear in her voice. Kent’s heart went out to the girl. Even now, she tried to believe the best of her mother. That somewhere inside that armored chest of hers beat a heart.

  Kent knew better.

  Carla’s snorting was her answer.

  “No, your mom realized that if she killed you, it would be over.” He looked at Carla. “And you didn’t want it to be over, did you? You liked how it felt for all that red to cover up all that blonde.”

  A savage smile upon her lips, Carla answered, “To just pound and pound and pound until I couldn’t pound anymore. It felt like I did on the track. So free.”

  And so psychotic, but Kent didn’t add that. He’d learned his lesson.

  But Lyla’s lip trembled and tears streaked her face. “Free? You’ve been killing and killing and keeping me a prisoner with this guilt.”

  “I know,” Carla answered ever so matter-of-factly. “That was just an added bonus.”

  Kent felt Lyla’s intent before her movement. He tried to reach out and grab her, but the girl screamed, running straight at her mother. While he couldn’t blame her, he did need to stop her.

  Carla raised the butcher knife, preparing to end what she had started so long ago, but Kent flipped his knife, caught it by the point, and then flung it at Carla. The blade sailed over Lyla and struck her mother in the shoulder, just hard enough to spin the butcher knife away from her daughter.

  Kent surged forward, grabbing Lyla around the waist, and then hurling her toward the tunnel.

  “Run!” he yelled. Kent didn’t have time to see if she obeyed as he turned back to Carla, whose look of surprise gave way to fury.

  She pulled his knife from her shoulder and came at him with both blades. Kent whipped off his coat and wrapped it around his hand. What protection it would give against German-hardened knives, he wasn’t sure, but it was all he had.

  Hiding in that closet for four hours, Kent developed the sense that the perpetrator lived within that house. It had to be. The stalking was too intimate. The picking off friends one by one too specific. But was it the father? Or the driver? Or the mother? Kent couldn’t be sure. Next time he was taking the kid and just keep running. Let somebody else figure out which one.

  Carla came at him with every bit of energy that her Olympics-trained legs could give her, the stainless steel glittering in the flickering light. His flashlight. It was tiny, but size didn’t always matter, right?

  Dodging one knife, Kent let the flashlight slip from his fingers, catching it by the thin wristband. As the second knife sliced through the air, Kent slung the flashlight forward, smacking Carla right between the eyes.

  That had to sting.

  She stumbled a step, but Kent took every advantage of it to catch her arm and crank it back. Her muscles betrayed her and she dropped the knife. Kent caught it in midair and brought it back to bear, but the bitch was fast.

  The butcher knife blade glanced off his arm, slicing a little filet of Kent off. German engineering, man. He held onto the knife though, coming back around as Carla lurched forward, knocking her forehead into his.

  Either he was getting osteoporosis, or that chick had one thick skull as their bones cracked together and Kent stumbled backward. His vision blurred as he tried to keep his feet. Carla, however, raised the butcher knife overhead and swung downward with all her might. Kent braced for the pain. Braced for the blood loss. With any hope, there would be an ambulance close by.

  But the blow never landed. Instead, Carla teetered to the side as her body shook from a blow from behind. The woman tipped forward to reveal Lyla, board in hand. She hit her mother again, knocking her to her knees.

  Kent struggled to rise, fighting off double vision and rolling nausea. “Lyla, no!”

  Lyla struck Carla again, the knives dropping harmlessly to the ground, but Lyla didn’t stop. She raised the board again and again.

  Finally, he gained his feet, wrapping his arms around Lyla, keeping them at her side so she couldn’t swing again.

  “Whoa, there, Lizzie Borden.”

  Lyla fought to break free as her mother lay motionless at their feet. “But doesn’t she deserve it?” she asked, the whites of her eyes bloodshot, and her blonde hair matted against her head. “Doesn’t she?”

  “Of course she does,” Kent answered. “But do you?”

  Lyla looked into his eyes. He knew that line she wanted to cross. He also knew what it felt like to have to live on the other side of it.

  He let go of her and backed away an unsteady step. “It is your call.”

  The girl held the board like a bat, gripping the raw wood as if it weren’t depositing a thousand splinters in her hand. She gazed defiantly, almost daring him to go back on his word. When he didn’t, a shudder passed through her body, and the board pitched out of her hand.

  “Kent!” Nicole yelled as she ran into the tunnel. “Carla’s the killer!”

  Lyla looked at Kent as Kent looked at Lyla, and they both chuckled.

  “Um, yeah,” Kent said as he put pressure on his arm wound. “We kind of figured that out.”

  Nicole knelt down to check Carla’s pulse. She was still alive. Others poured out of the passageway. Uniformed cops, EMTs, and Kent even thought he spotted a firefighter in there. Where were they two minutes ago? He could have at least used the axe.

  His partner tried to herd Lyla
away. “Come on, hon.”

  But the girl turned back, hugging Kent, burying his face in her chest. He smoothed her sweaty hair, careful not to drip blood onto it as he guided her to the exit.

  Nicole raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Kent asked. “I told you I was great with kids.”

  MY SOUL TO KEEP – the Post-Plain Jane short story featuring Nicole

  PROLOGUE

  Dean Henderson clipped his identification badge onto his shirt pocket. After working twenty-three years at the plant, you would think the guards could recognize him, but no. Each morning he had to put on a tie and this stupid badge.

  “Roxy!” he heard his wife, Kerri, call up the stairs to their daughter.

  He could smell bacon and, hopefully, hash browns. Yep, the best days of the week were when Roxy had late morning classes at the community college. You think his wife would make him a full breakfast? No such luck. Dean was lucky to get a cup of coffee and a burnt bagel when Roxy had an early class and caught breakfast at the school.

  Straightening his tie, Dean stepped out of the master bedroom to find his wife now at the base of the stairs, craning her neck to see up to the second floor. “Roxy, honey, breakfast is ready!”

  “Great,” Dean said as he attempted to kiss his wife on the cheek, but her frown, now ever present, warned him away. “I’ll just go serve myself.”

  “No,” Kerri said. “We all eat together.”

  Which really meant Roxy got her pick of the crispiest bacon.

  “Let her sleep in,” Dean suggested. “If she wants to slide into class as it is starting, that’s her call.”

  Kerri glared at him. “Did you even hear what time she came in last night?”

  “No, but again, she’s over eighteen. We told her if she lived at home we would let her keep her own hours.”

  His wife guffed like an offended lion. “We also discussed having a reasonable bedtime on school nights.”

  He would never win. Not when it came to Kerri and her helicopter-mom mentality. Maybe he could sneak into the kitchen while she was distracted and snag some bacon. But even that hope was crushed as Kerri mounted the stairs one at a time.

  “Roxy, up and at ‘em!”