On His Watch (Vengeance Is Mine Book 1)

by Susanne Matthews

  Descending the stairs once more, he walked over to the garage and stepped inside. Why hadn’t the doctor closed the door? Moving along cautiously, his gut screaming something was wrong here, he examined the two vehicles. The minivan, a new model, was closest to him. It was empty and locked. Stepping over to the silver BMW, he glanced in side, choking on the wad of gum he swallowed in his surprise.

  “What the hell?”

  Through the open window, he saw the doctor lying in a pool of blood in the backseat. Jason didn’t have to touch the body to know he was dead. The man’s throat had been slit from one side to the other, almost deep enough to decapitate him, his face contorted in pain, his mouth taped shut. His hands were bloody stumps with all of his fingers missing. Tortured and then killed. His stomach heaved, and he fought to keep the bile where it belonged.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He pulled out his gun. Why hadn’t he moved his ass? Why had he assumed it was nothing? Hadn’t he learned not to jump to conclusions? Rick was going to hang him out to dry on this.

  Ready to go back to work? After this screw up? Hell, he might never be, and now he would have to live with this on his conscience, too. Jason stared at the blood on the door knob of the door leading into the house and reached for his cellphone.

  The time display read 9:45. Half-an-hour had gone by since Molly’s call. Whatever he found in there was on him. He continued to stare at the door, knowing he’d have to go inside, terrified of what he was sure he would see. Speed dialing the station, he waited as the phone rang.

  “Larosa Police Depart—”

  “Molly, listen to me. Get Buck over here and try to find Pete. I need everybody on the job now. Have Lisa stay on patrol, but don’t let her come anywhere near the place. Get the state troopers on the line and have them send a forensic team here as well as backup. Call the coroner. We’ve got a massacre on our hands.”

  “Oh God, Jason,” she exclaimed. “The phone line’s still open. What do you want me to tell the 9 1 1 operator?”

  “Tell her to stay on the line. I’ll end the call as soon as I can find the phone, but we’ll need that tape—all of it.”

  Jason reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, relieved to find a new pair of the extra-large purple latex gloves he used at crime scenes. Pulling them out of their small plastic wrapper, he tugged them on. He swallowed awkwardly and opened the kitchen door, trying as hard as he could not to disturb the blood on the handle. He didn’t want to contaminate the scene, but he had to get inside. It was even worse than he’d expected. His experienced investigator’s eyes took in the grisly scene, reminding him vividly of the photos of the Manson family murders.

  The strong west wind blew the green and yellow checked curtains inward and had no doubt knocked over the crystal vase shattered on the floor beside the kitchen counter. Red roses lay trapped within the broken glass. Two of the kitchen drawers stood open as if someone had been searching for something. On the kitchen wall, written in what was probably the victims’ blood, he read, il peccato di padre. He knew it wasn’t Spanish, although his high school Spanish was more than a little rusty. It might be Italian, but he had no idea what it meant. Padre was often used for father. Was it a line from a prayer? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

  The doctor’s son lay on his back on the floor in front of the open refrigerator, surrounded by broken glass, blood, orange juice, and red rose petals. The boy’s throat had been cut like his father’s. His eyes were open, staring up into nothingness. Poor kid. He recognized him from somewhere—the ball park, maybe? If he’d moved faster, would the boy still be alive? From the amount of blood on the floor and soaking into his superhero pajamas, it was doubtful. The child had bled out quickly. At least his hands hadn’t been mutilated. Thank God for that.

  Jason looked down at the floor. Dozens of bloody footprints crisscrossed the light gray ceramic tiles. He tried not to step on any of them, tried to stay out of the pooling blood, but it was hopeless. The forensic techs would have to have his boots.

  He walked around the table, and his heart all but stopped. For a second, he was caught in a vicious nightmare, reliving a scene that had haunted him for the last twelve years. He shook his head. This time, the woman’s hair wasn’t black. He pushed the memory back where it belonged. He didn’t want to believe the disfigured, bloodied creature on the floor was the doctor’s wife, the redhead he’d mistaken for the receptionist, but the few strands of red hair not caked in blood gave her away. She lay on her left side, curled in the fetal position, her right hand inside her pajama jacket pocket. It looked as if she’d been used as a kickboxing dummy. What had he thought? Sleepy little town? Shit like this wasn’t supposed to happen here.

  A finger lay in the blood near what was left of her face. Like an automaton, he moved to the fridge, opened the freezer, and grabbed the ice cube tray. He dumped the ice into the empty fruit bowl on the table, gently picked up the severed digit, and placed it on the ice, the way he’d been told to do in his first aid course. It dawned on him it wouldn’t matter to a dead woman if he’d preserved her finger. They wouldn’t reattach it before they buried her.

  He placed the bowl on the table and turned back to the body, vaguely aware of the sweat running down the side of his face and his back. The strong coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils. A slight glow flickered through the blue silk of her right pocket. A cellphone? The call he’d thought had been an accident might have been the last thing she’d done before dying. Her right hand was still inside the pocket, as if she’d tried to hide the phone’s light.

  Why hadn’t she tried to protect her head and her face? So what if they saw the damn glow of the phone? He should wait for the coroner, but he had to make sure this was the phone he was searching for. He reached into the pocket doing his best not to disturb the body. Her top slipped open, revealing her belly. She’d been pregnant. She’d tried to shield the child. Horror filled him and tears ran down his cheeks.

  This was his fault, too. An innocent child had died because he’d dragged his heels. His stomach churned again, and unable to suppress the bile this time, he ran to the sink and vomited. The similarity to the Tate-Bianca murders chilled him. What the hell was this? Some sick copycat replaying one of California’s most gruesome murders?

  God almighty! What kind of animals did something like this?

  In more than fifteen years of police work, he’d never seen anything like it. Tears ran down his cheeks. He turned back to the body, reaching once more for the cellphone, and his hand halted its movement when he heard her faint moan.

  She was still alive! How was that even possible?

  He stared at her battered and bloody face. Most of the damage seemed to be on her left side. She was looking at him, the gray-green eye he’d seen in his sleep staring straight into his soul. The woman he’d rescued back in March, the woman who’d called him an answer to prayer. Well, she sure as hell wouldn’t say that now.

  Hadn’t he warned her he was no angel? He simply had never expected to fall this far. How many more deaths would he have to carry on his shoulders?

  Tears pooled in her right eye and trickled down her blood-splattered cheek. He didn’t dare touch her. Who knew what kind of injuries she’d sustained?

  “I’ll find whoever did this to you if it’s the last thing I ever do,” he vowed.

  His gaze never left hers as he pulled his own phone out of his pocket and speed dialed the station. Molly answered on the first ring.

  “Where the hell’s Buck?” he almost screamed into the phone. “Molly, I need an air ambulance out here now. Mrs. Hart’s alive, but she’s in bad shape, really bad shape. Let the 9 1 1 operator know the scene is secure and have her sever the line from that end. I can’t touch the phone right now. Make sure she sends a copy of the tape of the entire call to the Larosa Sheriff’s Department as soon as she can.” He hung up.

  “Hang in there, Mrs. Hart. Help will be here soon.”

  He removed his jacket and c
overed her. She must be cold. People who’d lost that much blood went into shock, and people in shock were cold. Wasn’t that what the EMT had said at his most recent first-aid refresher?

  He thought he’d seen it all when he’d first joined the bureau and had worked that serial rape case in L.A. twelve years ago with the BAU—the Behavioral Analysis Unit seemed to get called in on the goriest cases. None of his bureau training nor any of the cases he’d been on before or after could have prepared him for this. Hell, a tour of duty in the worst place on Earth wouldn’t do it. Sure, he’d watched training videos of brutal home invasions, had seen slasher movies with all the blood and gore Hollywood could manufacture, but it wasn’t the same as walking in on the aftermath of a bloodbath like this. Nothing equipped you to deal with the emotional turmoil this inflicted, especially when dragging your ass might have been responsible for a lot of it.

  The sound of a siren and the squeal of brakes filled the air. Footsteps pounded up the veranda.

  He yelled at the deputy, “Buck, come through the garage. We’re in the kitchen.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Buck exclaimed, entering the room. He stumbled as he took in the grisly scene, trying not to step on any of the evidence he saw before him, and raised his hand to tip his hat back. “What the hell happened here? It’s like something out of a horror movie.”

  “Home invasion, maybe something else, probably personal, judging from the writing on the wall,” Jason said softly. “She’s still alive. I’m going to stay with her. I don’t think she’s going to last long.”

  He knelt down on a relatively blood-free section of the floor. She slowly pulled her hand out of the pocket of her top and dropped the cellphone on the floor beside her. She lifted her hand, and he took it in his, squeezing her fingers gently in an effort to reassure her. She responded weakly.

  “I’m here,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you.”

  She seemed to be trying to speak, and he bent closer to her face, but she didn’t make another sound. He heard Buck’s footsteps as he came around the table. “Holy shit! Where’s Mandy?” he cried. “She’s their five-year-old. She and my daughter Lily are friends.”

  Jason looked up at Buck and straightened. Christ, how many rookie mistakes had he made here? He hadn’t checked the place. Hell, the bastard who’d done this could still be inside.

  “I haven’t been through the house,” he admitted, and saw Buck’s frown. “I didn’t realize there was anyone else in the family,” he added defensively, and looked down at Mrs. Hart once more. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow. “Where the hell’s that ambulance? If there’s a kid here, she’s got to be upstairs. The doctor’s in the backseat of his car. You can search the house if you think you can handle it, but be careful. Whoever did this could still be up there.” The state of the kitchen didn’t bode well for the missing child, and finding Mandy’s body would be hard on someone who was a father like Buck. “Or you can wait for the state troopers and the forensic unit.”

  “No. I’ll do it,” Buck answered. He opened his holster and pulled out his Colt revolver, the gun made like its predecessors from the Old West. “Our town, our crime. I want to catch the bastard who did this. I knew her and the boy—took him fishing last weekend.” He gulped and pointed at the bloody printing on the wall. “It says the father’s sin. My mother’s family is Italian. This looks like a drugged-up psycho orgy and robbery, but from the words, I’d say it was some kind of hit. I’ll go look for Mandy. If she’s alive …” Buck didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

  “Holy shit!” Pete, the youngest deputy on the force, came into the room, still dressed in his casual clothes rather than his uniform. His paler deepened as he took in the carnage. Turning away abruptly, he raced to the sink and vomited.

  Jason ran his left hand through his hair and glanced up at his young deputy. The youth, shame and horror imprinted on his face, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “It’s okay, Pete. I did the same thing. This crime scene is contaminated, and the techs will have to deal with that. We’ll give them our boots and DNA swabs so they can eliminate our contributions from the evidence. No one should ever have to walk in on something like this. The doctor didn’t drive that car here. Why don’t you check the clinic down the street? Be careful. You don’t know what you might be walking into. See if anyone saw anything suspicious.”

  “Right away, Jason.”

  He prayed Pete wouldn’t find anything at the clinic, but doubted it. Jason recalled the young nurse who’d removed his stitches back in April and prayed she hadn’t been at work tonight. The only way for the doctor to get here in the back of that car had to be if the party started elsewhere. The siren came on again, and the tires squealed as the vehicle drove away.

  Jason continued to sit beside the injured woman, his hand holding hers.

  “It’s going to be okay. The air ambulance will be here any minute,” he whispered, not believing a word of what he was saying and trying to suppress the rage building inside him. If she survived, nothing would ever be okay again. No human being could take the kind of beating she had and come out unscathed. She may not have witnessed her husband’s torture and murder, but she must’ve seen her son’s body, felt the pain from the wounds she bore, and sensed the life draining from the baby she carried.

  Five minutes later, Buck’s feet stomped down the stairs, and the man called to him, his voice filled with excitement and joy. He didn’t enter the room.

  “I’ve found her, and she’s alive, Jason. She was in a sleeping bag under the bed in the guest room. Don’t ask me what she was doing there. There’s no one else up there, but someone tossed the master bedroom. I’m taking Mandy home to Trudy for the night. We’ll contact child services in the morning. The kid was asleep. She doesn’t know what happened, but I scared the daylights out of her when I yanked her out from under the bed. I’ll be back as soon as I get her settled. The coroner and the troopers are here.”

  Jason cleared his throat to answer, but the emotions clogging it made it hard for him to speak.

  “Thanks, Buck,” he managed. “Looking down, he saw the eye gazing up at him once more. “Your little girl is safe, Mrs. Hart, she’s safe. She’ll need her mommy, so don’t you give up now.”

  The woman sighed and closed her eye.

  Tears spilled down his cheeks. She had to live. If there was a God, he couldn’t take that child’s mother from her, too. She’d lost enough tonight. How much of it was his fault?

  Chapter Three

  She floats on a blood red sea of fire. Pain, so much pain. There’s nothing here but agony. Something forces air into her aching chest and sucks it out again. Hot knives stab her brain. This torture is unbearable. What has she done to deserve this suffering?

  She wants to open her eyes. She needs to tell someone something important, but her mouth won’t cooperate. Her body no longer obeys her commands. Instead it sinks and bobs up again in this ocean of agony. Make it stop, make it go away.

  A body drifts over to hers, its large brown eyes open, condemning her. “Why did you let this happen?” it asks before sinking beneath the surface. A smaller body bobs up, lets out a mewling cry, and disappears. Dead mice float all around her, and she tries to get away from them, but she can’t move. The Cheshire cat grins at her and drops more vermin carcasses into the sea.

  A fire-scarred demon, wearing a necklace of diamonds and blood-red-tipped fingers, rises Poseidon-like out of the water, sneers at her, and walks away, a metal instrument clutched in its clawed hand.

  Strange voices yell disconnected phrases into the gloom. “This is all your fault ... You asked for this, bitch … If you hadn’t mollycoddled him like that, I wouldn’t have to discipline him … Dogs are vile creatures. I won’t have them in my house … So, you like it rough … It’s what our employer said to write … There’s no one upstairs.”

  She flinches at each phrase as if the words are on the end of a whip, branding her with e
ach stroke. Other voices speak from far away, their words low and garbled. The torturous ocean swallows them and leaves only their faint echo behind.

  The sea bubbles once more, and her fear intensifies. He’s coming for her. A black-haired demon walks along the surface coming closer and closer. She tries to flee. The pain he’ll inflict will be more than she can endure. Her body is a seething mass of confusion, fear, and anguish. Is this Hell? He reaches out a skeletal hand and grips her shoulder. Cold fills her, and the pain increases. She can’t take much more of this. Suddenly, it’s gone. Warmth fills her. He’s back. He’ll keep the monsters away.

  * * *

  She fought her way out of the emptiness surrounding her. She’d tried to do it earlier, but there’d been so much pain that she’d descended into the oblivion of nothingness again, where the demons chased her and the angel came and comforted her. Moaning softly, the sound vanished amidst the hiss of other noises filling the room. Her body ached as if she’d been in the same position for an eternity. She opened her eyes, but the left one wouldn’t cooperate. The bright light hurt, and she closed her eye once more.

  The agonizing pain was coming not only from her left hand but from the inside of her head, like the worst hangover she could imagine. That must have been quite a party—why didn’t she remember it? Just how much did she drink?

  And what the hell did she do to her hand? It was rigid, throbbed like the dickens, and she didn’t seem to be able to move her fingers. She slowly opened her eye again, looked down, and found her hand encased in a plaster cast. She tried to turn her head, but her neck was stiff, and the slight motion sent pins and needles careening through her body and stabbing pain through her skull.

  What the hell happened to me?

  The room wasn’t familiar, but she recognized it for what it was—a private room in a hospital. She slowly forced her head to turn to the left and stared at a white-haired woman sitting in the chair under the window, holding rosary beads, her head bent in prayer. There was nothing familiar about this person, and when she tried to think about it, her head ached even more.