The Burning Girls: A completely gripping crime thriller packed with heart-pounding twists (Detective Ellie Reeves Book 3)

by Rita Herron

  People scrambled to their viewing spots before the parade began.

  Music erupted and the crowd cheered. Grateful for the noise and distraction, he called Angelica’s number, tapping his foot on the ground as he waited. She answered immediately.

  “I know who killed those women. Meet me at the gazebo.”

  Anticipation built inside him as she pivoted to scan the park, hesitating. Debating. Wondering if the call was a trap.

  She came anyway, just as he knew she would.

  His car was parked a few feet away, out of sight and far away from the main crowd.

  She carefully picked her way across the grass, her heels grappling with the sand and uneven soil as she drew closer. Her body was tense, eyes peeled for trouble, and she gripped her phone as if it was a weapon that could protect her.

  Still and quiet, he waited. Watched. Not breathing.

  When she reached the trees near the fence, he slipped up behind her. She startled, but he grabbed her around the neck before she could turn, then shoved the rag of chloroform over her mouth and nose. Seconds later, she collapsed against him, unconscious.

  Her long hair fell across his arm as he picked her up, carrying her into the nearby warehouse, a holding ground for granite and stone, a big business in the area.

  The need to end it here burst inside him, to light the fire and watch her body go up in flames.

  But he had to wait until the timing was right.

  He tied her up and dumped her between the giant stone slabs, satisfied that if she came to, no one would hear her for the soundproofing of the granite and concrete markers inside.

  Then he walked back to the parade, smiling as he went to take his place among the locals.

  132

  Rose Hill

  Ellie’s gaze was drawn to the wilted and crushed rose petals on the ground by Ms. Eula’s house. When she’d visited the older woman before, the roses had been blooming such a brilliant bright red that you could see them from the dirt road leading to the house.

  Now the red had faded, the dead flowers resembled the color of dried blood.

  The pungent scent of life was gone and it its place, the rotten odor of death permeated the air.

  “Come on, up, Ellie,” Ms. Eula said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Ellie raised a brow and climbed the steps. “You knew I was coming?”

  “Just a sense.” Ms. Eula laid a hand on her heart, her wrinkled hand starting to show the strains of arthritis. “It’s time, I suppose.”

  Ellie sank into the second rocker, surprised at the breeze fluttering through the trees.

  “It’s the ghosts whispering for me to tell,” Ms. Eula said.

  “Tell me what?”

  Sighing wearily, Ms. Eula turned to face her. The woman’s stare sent a shiver through Ellie.

  “How much do you know?” Ms. Eula asked softly.

  Ellie curled her fingers around the arms of the rocking chair. “That you were once married to a man named Dr. Ernie Hangar. That he disappeared a few years back.”

  Ms. Eula gave a resigned nod. “The rumors say I killed him and buried him in the garden.”

  “I’ve heard that. But I want to hear what happened from you.”

  Pulling a lace hankie from the pocket of her housedress, Eula dabbed at her eyes. “It was so long ago, it doesn’t seem real now. But when you started finding these women murdered, I knew it was time for the story to come out.”

  “Your husband worked at a research clinic?” Ellie sat patiently, giving the woman time to tell it in her own way.

  “He did. His good friend Dr. Hoyt was excited over developing a sleep medication. Ernie agreed to run a sleep study to test the medication.”

  Nausea rose in Ellie’s stomach. “What was the purpose of the study?”

  “He said they wanted to help folks with anxiety and sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea. That lack of sleep can literally cause people to lose their minds. But that’s not all he was doing.” Pain laced Ms. Eula’s voice. “I was such a fool, I was blind to what was happening. Blind for a long, long time. But one day I figured it out.”

  “Figured out what?” Ellie both needed to hear Ms. Eula say it and dreaded it at the same time.

  Ms. Eula closed her eyes, the shame and agony of the memory gripping her. “Ernie took advantage of those young girls while they were sedated.” Her breath wheezed out.

  “How did you find out?” Ellie asked.

  “One day I went to the office to drop off some muffins. As usual, I was trying to please him, be the good wife.” Self-disgust laced her voice. “The receptionist was gone, and I heard voices from his office, so I went in and this girl was there. She… was crying, said she thought she’d been molested during the study, that she was pregnant, and she had dreams about a man being on her while she was in the lab.”

  Ellie released a shaky breath. “How did your husband respond?”

  Ms. Eula’s eyes were rimmed with tears. “He denied it, said the drug was causing hallucinations in some people and that she’d probably gotten drunk and slept with someone and wanted to blame the study. But the girl said she had been a virgin.”

  “Who was the girl, Ms. Eula?”

  Lightning streaked her anguished face. She looked as if she was a million miles away. “Agnes Butterfield… at least that was her name back then.”

  “She’s Agnes Curtis now.”

  Ms. Eula nodded. “I know. That poor child of hers. She was a sweet little girl.”

  “What happened then?” Ellie asked, drawing in a labored breath.

  “I went home, was in denial. But then I started thinking about the way he acted sometimes. How uptight he was, how distant. On the days of the sleep studies, he came in and went straight to the shower, as if he was trying to wash something right off him.” She tugged the worn afghan around her shoulders. “But that night… that night I got hit hard with the truth. That night I got blood on my hands.” She lifted her wrinkled hands and stared at them as if she could still see the blood on her fingers.

  133

  Blood stained Eula’s soul just as it had her hands that night.

  She was bone tired of keeping quiet. Her frail legs had walked miles and miles down the path of darkness, aching and determined and blundering along. She’d lost her way so many times she reveled in it. Hovering between worlds where she could speak to the dead, hold hands with the in-betweens, and mourn the past that never should have happened.

  But all that was coming to an end, like a well-tended vegetable garden after harvest. The good had been picked and all that was left were the weeds, dried seeds and soil that needed tilling again.

  “Ms. Eula,” Ellie said, drawing her out of her thoughts. “About that night?”

  “Yes, dear, please forgive an old woman her musings.” She rubbed her fingers over the worn threads of the blanket, lost in the tragedy and horror. “I was so distraught. Afraid what would happen when Ernie came home, that he’d raise his fist or call Reverend Ike. They were buddies back then, had been for years. Ernie bought his malarky hook, line and sinker. They met at college. It was the late seventies, and everyone was experimenting with LSD, cocaine, heroin and marijuana. Ike discovered he could use it to get people to follow him. He and Ernie thought they were gods.”

  “Ike is still using drugs to make his followers submissive,” Ellie said.

  Eula nodded gravely. “I would believe that… That night, all those years ago, I went home feeling sick inside. Ernie had this home office that he kept locked, forbidding me from going into it. Said a man had to have his privacy.” Her voice warbled. “But I couldn’t get Agnes’s words out of my mind. Her voice, her fear, her accusation.” The rocker moved back and forth, comforting as the wind picked up, swirling the humid air around her as the memories came to life again.

  “I broke into that room like a madwoman, throwing things around, digging through drawers. Finally, I found a key to the safe in his closet.” She closed her
eyes, reliving the moment in vivid clarity. “I opened that safe and there it was.”

  “There what was?” Ellie said.

  “Pictures of those girls. While they were sleeping in that cold sleep lab, he stripped them naked and took advantage of them.”

  “Photographs of him assaulting the women?” Ellie asked.

  Eula pressed her hand to her chest with a nod. “It tore me up. I… for a few minutes, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When I first met Ernie, he was so smart. Ambitious. Talked about becoming a doctor to save lives.” That was the day Eula had fallen in love. “I had stars in my eyes. Came from a family who never amounted to anything. Ernie was so handsome and charming. I couldn’t believe he wanted to be with me.” Shame filled her for being swayed by his false charm. “When he got into med school, I took a job at the sewing plant to help pay our bills. And when he finished and started to practice, I thought our life would always be good.” Her bones cracked as she shifted in the rocker. “Damn fool, that’s what I was.”

  “You wanted to believe the best in him,” Ellie said. “What happened to change things?”

  “I wanted a baby.” She laid her hand over her stomach and shook her head sadly. “But it didn’t happen. God didn’t bless me that way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ellie murmured.

  “So was I. Ernie got frustrated. Blamed me. Started saying I was worthless. Started staying out late and smelling like other women. He’d hang around the bars, chasing coeds I thought. I knew he was cheating, but I stayed. Thought it was my fault.”

  “That’s what he wanted you to think,” Ellie said.

  “I know that. And it worked for a while. We said vows,” she said, her heart breaking all over again. “Back then, with the way I was raised, that meant something.”

  The sound of her own erratic breathing blended with the wind rustling the flowers in the yard. Or maybe it was the ghosts of the dead remembering Ernie.

  “But then I saw the cold hard truth in those pictures, and I couldn’t deny what he was, a monster.” Her voice rose as the anger took root again. “I didn’t make him do that.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Ellie said.

  The rocker moved back and forth. “Lordy, I was in such shock that I didn’t hear Ernie come in until he was standing above me.” The memory of his firm hand on her shoulder and his enraged voice struck her as if it was yesterday. “He was furious that I violated his privacy.” She looked at Ellie then, back in time as she spoke, “Now ain’t that something? He was taking advantage of young girls and lying to me, and he was angry at me.”

  Ellie reached out, taking Eula’s hand in hers and stroking it. “That must have been horrible.”

  “For a minute, I was so upset I went plumb out of my mind. I shoved the pictures at him and told him I was going to the police. He grabbed me and threw me against the wall,” Eula said. “My head hit the side table and then I was bleeding. He came after me and tried to strangle me.” Her hand went to her throat as she recalled the pressure of his fingers against her windpipe. “But I heard Agnes’s voice in my head and then these other voices. Ones I didn’t know but girls screaming that he’d done the same thing to them, and I grabbed the lamp on his desk and flung it at him. I ran to the kitchen, was going to get the keys and drive to the sheriff’s office.” Her pulse hammered as the details flooded her mind, yet a sense of peace at finally telling her story bled through her. “But he caught me. Dragged me backwards by the hair. And I yanked the butcher knife from the counter and swung it at him. He laughed, said I was too weak to kill him.” A bitter chuckle rumbled from deep inside her. After all the times he’d used his brute force on her, she’d snapped. “But he was wrong. If I kept quiet about what he’d done, he’d keep on doing it. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Ellie stroked her hand. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Eula.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me. That was the first time in my life that I showed some courage.” A smile tugged at her lips as she remembered the shock on her husband’s face. “Oh, it wasn’t easy, mind you. We fought and struggled, and he beat me half to death, but I managed to push him off, grabbed that knife and crawled over by the stove. He thought he had me and lunged at me, but I hit him in the head with the cast-iron skillet, then stabbed him straight in the place where his heart should have been.” She couldn’t help herself. She laughed, her chest heaving as she looked down at the rose garden.

  “He died then?” Ellie asked, eyes widening.

  “Not right away. I put that knife to his throat, and I made him admit it.” Her chest heaved up and down. “He did, too. Told me it all started before he met me. He drugged a couple of women before. He was afraid he’d get caught, so he married me and tried to stop. But he started again a few years after we married, when I just thought he was out sleeping around. He was a doctor by then, researching pharmacology, knew what to use. Or at least he thought he did—one girl had a psychotic break after he attacked her, so he stopped again. He and Hoyt had been buddies forever. Hoyt was working on the sleeping drug and wanted to do experiments with it.”

  “And they teamed up to do a clinical trial study,” Ellie filled in.

  Eula nodded. “At the place by the community college.”

  “That’s where Agnes Curtis and Janie Huntington got involved.”

  “It was.”

  “Ms. Eula, do you want a lawyer?” Ellie asked softly.

  The old lady shook her head. “No, darlin’, I want it all told. I want those poor girls to know that I killed that bastard. Then I cleaned up all that blood and dragged him outside. He was mighty heavy, but I figured he wasn’t worth a casket.” A cackle escaped her. “So, I dug a hole, put his sorry ass into the cold hard ground with that skillet and covered him with dirt, cause that’s what he was made of.”

  134

  Crooked Creek

  Angelica roused from unconsciousness long enough to remember that someone had jumped her from behind. Anger at herself for getting caught off guard fueled her adrenaline and she tried to get up. But her wrists and ankles were tied, a gag stuffed in her mouth. Struggling against the bindings, she fought to undo them as she wiggled her body to the side. But she couldn’t turn over. Couldn’t move. Dammit. She silently screamed. The space was too tight.

  Fear choked her as she realized she was trapped. Inhaling to calm herself, she lifted her fingers in search of a way out, but they connected with smooth, slick cold stone that seemed to rise on all sides of her, surrounding her and shutting her in.

  For a moment, she thought she might be in a cave, but the stones felt smooth.

  Panicking, she clawed at the stone to pull herself up. But the mountainous rocks rose above her higher than she could reach and she couldn’t get any traction.

  The air was stifling, smothered with dust, and she felt like the concrete was caving in on her from all sides. Pretty soon she would be crushed.

  Collapsing, she forced herself to lie still and listen.

  She had to think. Be smart. When he came back, she’d pretend to be unconscious. Then she’d fight like hell.

  Until then, she maneuvered her hands to her mouth and tugged out the gag. She pulled at the ropes with her teeth. The rope strands frayed but didn’t budge. Spitting them out, she wiggled her wrists to loosen her hands, but the ropes were tied so tight that they cut into her skin and blood dripped down her arms.

  Frustrated, she banged and pushed the stone, hoping to move one of them, but they were so heavy she lost her breath and gave up.

  The dark space closed around her, and she screamed, praying someone could hear her. But her cries died between the concrete walls.

  135

  Rose Hill

  Ellie stared at the bed of roses where Eula had buried her husband. “Why roses?” she asked.

  “There was so much blood,” Ms. Eula whispered. “Ernie was a bleeder. All over the linoleum floor, spattered on the walls, all over my hands.” She lifted her hands, her fingers gnarled. “I had
a hard time scrubbing it out from under my fingernails. But once I had Ernie in the ground and covered, I came back inside and took the bleach and started cleaning.” She laughed softly. “Took me hours to wash up all that blood. Thought I’d pass out from the bleach fumes, but I wanted to scrub his dirtiness from my house and my soul. That’s when I decided to plant the roses. Blood-red roses to remind me of the blood that flowed from that man, freeing the evil inside.”

  Ellie didn’t know what to say. Then again, she sensed she didn’t have to say anything, that Ms. Eula had needed to unburden herself for a long time.

  “Ms. Eula, I think my mother might have been one of Ernie’s victims,” Ellie said, the words causing a sour taste in her mouth. “I’m adopted. And my file was with Gillian Roach, the social worker who handled some of the adoptions of the babies born from the assaults. Do you know anything about her? Maybe my mother’s name?”

  A deep piercing sadness darkened Ms. Eula’s eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t, darlin’. But I… may know where the answer is.”

  “Where?” Ellie asked, pulse jumping.

  Ms. Eula stood, her knobby knees cracking. “I kept those pictures and those files of Ernie’s. I don’t know why,” she said under her breath. “I guess as punishment.” She wrestled the afghan around her shoulders and reached for the screen door. “Or maybe because I knew that someday someone would come looking for them.”

  Ellie gave a nod but remained in the porch rocker, looking at the roses, her mind churning as Ms. Eula hobbled inside to retrieve the files.

  She was a by-the-book cop. Had to answer to the people of Bluff County. She should take Ms. Eula in.

  But… that didn’t feel right.

  Still, she had to update Derrick. Dr. Hangar’s death meant someone else was cleaning up after his crimes.

  136

  Crooked Creek[