Chapter 11
Sarah’s eyes opened.
Her heart raced. The blood roared in her ears like a train.
She couldn’t move.
Fear ignited, flaring along her helpless limbs.
Run! Hide! She’ll find you.
She always finds me.
Sarah stalled, stared down at her hands.
Blood dripped from her fingers. Her gaze followed a big, fat droplet as it fell from her finger to splatter on the tile floor.
She blinked. Three feet . . . her two and .
. . another. She stared at the larger foot—the one that wasn’t really hers.
Red-painted toenails matched the blood draped like a crimson ankle bracelet around the top of it where it had been severed from a leg.
Her body started to shake. Urine slid down her thighs.
Don’t look! Move!
Sarah lunged upward in bed, hugged her knees to her chest.
“Just a dream. Just a dream.”
Breathe. Slow. Deep.
Just a dream.
She looked at the clock. Blinked. Then took a moment to get her bearings.
Maine.
The missing girl.
The dead girl.
Sarah was okay.
Safe.
And pissed off.
She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed.
She glared at her cell phone. “Yeah, I know. I should have taken the damned medicine.” And eaten the chowder. The bowl of now-cold soup sat on the bedside table, untouched.
Her body shivered. She was soaked with sweat. Muttering profanities, mainly at herself, she peeled off her T-shirt and shed her sweatpants. She hated this shit. Nineteen years and she still fought the demons of her past every damned night in her sleep.
Three different shrinks or was it four? Five . . . no, six, separate drug trials. Nothing stopped the dreams unless it knocked her out cold. Then she couldn’t function the next day.
A vicious cycle!
In the bathroom, she flipped on the light and reached for a towel. Midnight was a hell of a time to take a shower, but she felt dirty. As much from her dreams as from the sweat.
Sarah stared at her reflection in the clouded-with-age mirror.
She looked old. Dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep.
Lines at the corners of those weary eyes.
Maybe from all those years she’d spent trying to smoke herself to death.
She was twenty-nine. She looked forty. And felt fifty. Thanks to her amazing childhood.
And the lack of sleep.
She twisted the knob and set the water temperature. Shoving her panties down her thighs, she wondered if Kale Conner would mind getting an early start. Say at one in the morning?
Not very likely.
She stepped into the claw-foot tub; the hot water felt good against her skin.
She yanked the curtain around the tub and dropped her head back to enjoy the heat.
Despite her intention to relax, images from Valerie Gerard’s crime scene flicked one after the other through her head.
This was no random killing or sacrifice related to some curse.
Valerie Gerard had been a target. The killer was someone who thought she was a liar.
The stitched lips made it personal. The distinct message made it undeniable. A message specifically for Valerie.
At only nineteen, who had the girl pissed off that royally?
A freshman in college. Honor student. Award-winning high school student who had graduated valedictorian. President of the class. Et cetera, et cetera. No history of drug use or promiscuity.
Then there was Alicia Appleton. High school senior. Cheerleader. Miss Popular at school. Rich kid. Got a Range Rover for her sixteenth birthday. Had an iPhone and all the other cool gadgets teenagers loved. Won beauty pageants far and wide.
The kind of girl you loved to hate.
The two victims had nothing in common. Not friends. Not hobbies or goals. Not tax bracket. Nothing.
Same perp involved? Sarah’s gut said yes.
Could be a copycat in Alicia’s case. Since Alicia hadn’t gone missing until after Valerie’s body was found, it was possible someone had used the murder as an opportunity to get rid of someone he or she despised.
But, like Conner said, Youngstown was a small place where everyone knew everyone else. The likelihood that two killers could be lurking about was a stretch.
Not to mention that only two days separated the events.
Realistically, that element could shift Sarah’s theory either way.
Too early to tell.
Sarah shoved the dripping shower curtain aside and stepped out of the tub.
When she’d dried her skin and hair sufficiently, she went in search of clothes.
Going back to bed would be a waste of time.
Any possibility of sleep was long gone. She did much of her best theorizing and deducing in the middle of the night.
For years now she’d had one simple but firm motto: She could sleep when she was dead.
Jeans, heavy-duty wool socks, T-shirt, and hooded sweatshirt. Good to go. She shivered in spite of the thick clothing. Where was the thermostat in this joint?
She moved around the room but didn’t find one. Whatever. She pulled her ski cap on, figuring that would help since her hair was still a little damp.
The innkeeper evidently didn’t have a crappy room to give her, so he’d decided to freeze her out.
On the bed, she spread the notes and photos out around her.
She hadn’t been able to get anything on the autopsies from twenty years ago.
The files weren’t available, she’d been told before coming, and according to Deputy Brighton, they weren’t only not available, they had been destroyed.
Those details she would at some point have to get from Chief Willard.
Valerie had been a pretty girl. Blond hair, blue eyes.
A little plump but not fat by any means.
Astigmatism forced her to wear prescription eyeglasses.
Smart, obviously. No history of trouble of any sort.
Sarah wondered if the girl had stuck with the glasses rather than going with contacts as a way of hiding from the social world she didn’t quite fit into.
Sarah considered the photo of the victim naked on that cold stone floor. Exposed, humiliated. Mouth sewn shut so she couldn’t lie anymore.
Why would a good girl with seemingly nothing to hide, lie?
Digging through the other documents, Sarah picked up the photo of Alicia Appleton.
It was easy to get photos of just about anyone these days.
Most had a social media account of some sort.
Type the name in a search box and voilà.
All sorts of images and personal information.
Far too many of these kids didn’t set their profiles to private, allowing anyone who wanted to look to do so.
Sarah set the borrowed social media image of Alicia aside and studied the ones she had of Valerie. Sarah would bet a month’s salary that Valerie’s killer had known her personally. Maybe even gone to school with her at UMass.
It was possible that some psycho had focused his obsession on the girl. Picked her out of the crowd for no other reason than some aspect of her appearance.
But Sarah’s honed instincts were screaming otherwise.
“Who hated you so much, Valerie?”
Sarah stared at the photo from the ME’s office.
Wait.
If the victim bled out at the scene . . .
How was she restrained?
No drugs were mentioned in the preliminary toxicology screen, indicating she hadn’t been drugged, and certainly she wouldn’t have just lain there of her own free will.
Sarah hadn’t been able to get a copy of the autopsy.
When she’d asked the first time, the stock answer had been that the report wasn’t ready for release.
Which meant the ME hadn’t completed the report.
Then, upon her second request, the contact who’d provided the crime-scene photo at significant personal gain had chickened out on her and refused her calls.
The results of the tox screen had been given in a press conference late yesterday.
Sarah stared at the victim’s wrists, then her hands.
Those markings on her wrists could have been tape or rope burns.
But how had the killer kept the victim’s arms out of the way while doing his or her evil work?
There was nothing to tie her arms to on either side of her torso or above her head.
Unless ropes had been stretched from the center of the chapel floor to the support beams at the sides of the structure.
Sounded like a lot of extra effort to Sarah, and why would the restraints have been removed before the crime-scene photos were taken?
Not standard protocol.
What were the other markings on her hands? The tops of Valerie’s hands appeared skinned or scraped. The tissue certainly looked torn. More patches of torn skin left a path up her forearms. All the way to the bends of her elbows.
Sarah studied the markings for a long while, and then she knew.
“Son of a bitch.”
She scrambled off the bed and pulled on her Converses.
Her theory couldn’t be confirmed without a copy of the autopsy, and that wasn’t happening in the middle of the night. But there could be something at the scene.
All she had to do was remember how to get there.
Sarah braked to a hard stop.
“Damn it.”
She’d passed it again.
After dragging the gearshift into reverse once more, she hit the accelerator. The car lunged backward. She slammed on the brake. Jerked forward.
Puffing out a frustrated breath, she let off the brake and eased down on the accelerator with a little less force.
The tires spun, then grabbed on to the icy dirt and propelled the car slowly backward.
When she’d reached the halfway point along Chapel Trail, which she now recognized after passing it twice, she moved cautiously to the side of the road and slowed to a stop.
Shutting off the engine, she peered through the darkness.
With nothing but the aid of the moonlight, she could barely see the cluster of broken trees she’d noted on her first visit. Yep. The chapel was close by.