Deadly Messengers (20 page)

“No, no, I’m fine. Really. I don’t want to be a drag. You’ve got work tomorrow. I’ll just go to bed. Really, I’m good. It was good to hear your voice. I love you, little brother.”

Jack
had
sounded more positive, and he
had
sounded as though he’d wrangled his emotions. A minute later their call ended but only after Lance had made Jack agree they’d catch up the next night for a meal.

The next day when Lance tried to call Jack to organize dinner, he couldn’t get hold of him. Worried, he went to Jack’s apartment. He found him there, hanging from his bedroom door, his belt around his neck. Lance would never get over finding his brother like that. The guilt had burrowed so deep in his psyche, it still hadn’t left him, still pounded him on occasion to the point where he would be physically sick. W
hat if?
was a dangerous, soul-draining game.

As angry as he was with himself, Lance was even more incensed with the newspapers, the journalists, all those who had harassed his brother. If they’d just left Jack alone instead of using him to sell newspapers, he felt for sure Jack might have pulled through. He’d been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by professional newsmongers.

The ache from missing his brother was always there, and this damn journalist, freelance writer, or whatever she called herself, had churned everything back up. O’Grady realized his fists were clenched so tight his knuckles throbbed. He cursed under his breath; he didn’t need these feelings clouding his judgment.

His fury exploded like an over-inflated balloon. O’Grady turned suddenly, striding back to the Jennings woman. She wasn’t far behind him, having the audacity to follow him back to the house. He came to a halt in front of the startled woman, standing over her, his intimidating height dwarfing her five-foot-six, slim frame.

O’Grady kept his voice calm. He wouldn’t give her the pleasure of knowing how much she’d upset him.

“When you say it’s
just
a
job
, keep in mind that for the people you’re using to
do
your
job,
this is
their
life,
their
nightmare. And you’re just adding to the horror.”

Kendall Jennings eyes were wide—even more incredibly blue—and surprised. She clutched her bag tightly and looked afraid. He felt pleased he’d unsettled her. Some of her own medicine, back.

“There are dead people back in that house. They have friends and relatives who’ll need to come to terms with this, live with it for the rest of their lives. Children whose parents are gone. Brothers and sisters who’ve lost a family member in the worst possible way. So saying it’s
just
a job sounds just as bullshit as a texting driver killing a kid and saying it’s
just
an accident.”

Kendall Jennings eyes glistened. Good, she was getting the message. O’Grady bet she wondered now what kind of Pandora’s box she’d opened.
Well, that’s what you get when you play with people’s lives.

He jabbed a warning finger at her.

“Take some responsibility for your actions for once in your life. Grow a soul, while you’re at it.”

He turned away from her once again and headed back down the street to return the two blocks to the crime scene. The feeling of winning stayed with him for one block, then he chided himself for rest of the way for allowing her to rile him up.

By the time he reached the house and waded through the hive- activity of crime scene investigation, he’d cooled right down, even feeling a little remorse. Jack’s death wasn’t her fault. She’d just pressed the wrong buttons at the wrong time.

The instant he passed the two bodies inside the entrance his brain refocused on the job. Kendall Jennings disappeared from his thoughts. The only thing on his mind:
Who does a thing like this?

He wasn’t a criminal profiler, but this already seemed wrong. If this was a murder investigation and they were interviewing Kate Wilker, they wouldn’t make her for this crime. Women didn’t tend to go crazy with a gun. They might shoot an abusive spouse or kill out of jealousy, but mass murder just wasn’t the norm. This was like a film where the scriptwriter had mixed up the characters.

Add to this anomaly the fact this was the third mass killing in twelve days in their jurisdiction and it all seemed way too bizarre and coincidental. Was there something in the water? Was there some kind of copycat activity going on here? Would he wake up tomorrow to discover this was all in his imagination, the guilt after all these years having eaten into his mind?

O’Grady felt his world tilt at an uncomfortable, slippery angle. What he
did
know was Kendall Jennings had stirred up memories he didn’t want stirred. That pissed him off, big time. Add that to a feeling in his gut that something
was
wrong with all these killings, that they were connected, even if that made no sense. Suddenly he felt afraid.

Until he established what it all meant, maybe nobody should feel safe. When ordinary people, without provocation, suddenly start killing that wasn’t merely a mystery to be solved, it was a nightmare beyond comprehension.

ONE WEEK AFTER THE DEATHS on Bentley Street West, the headlines had already moved on to the new government budget and what it would mean to families. Boss17 shuffled the pages of the newspaper, the sound of the rustling paper overloud in his ears. The mass killing now relegated to page six. Even then, it was nothing more than a picture of the surviving children and an unflattering photograph of the killer Kate Wilker. The funerals were to be held in two days. No doubt there would be a mass turn-out of friends and relatives to bid farewell, along with curious onlookers come to gape at the sorrow.

He knew what would happen after that.
Absolutely nothing
. The killings would diminish to small mentions when something similar occurred in the future. His other two pieces of handiwork had disappeared from the news quickly, too. That surprised and dismayed him. He’d incorrectly calculated a cluster of mass killings would be seen as a pattern, causing serious questions to be asked. He’d imagined calls for an inquiry.

Such a shame. Such a terrible, wasteful shame.

He pondered his mistake. He’d clearly misjudged the police, the media and the general population.
Didn’t anyone care? Didn’t anyone have questions?
Maybe the police
had
put it together, and they weren’t talking to the media. That
might
be a reasonable scenario.

All last night only one thought plagued him: he might not have done enough, that he needed more. It was a decision he hadn’t imagined facing. He should have factored in society’s preparedness to readily accept mass-deaths. If he tried again, surely at some point, the police
must
realize something wasn’t right, that these killings were an anomalous cluster.

“Hmm,” he said, as he folded the paper in half and placed it carefully, thoughtfully, on the table. He picked up his cup of tea and took a sip. “Maybe I’m being too subtle.”

KENDALL’S MOOD HAD GROWN WORSE. Every time she thought about that detective, she felt a tug inside. He was a jerk, but he was also a good-looking jerk. She had a feeling below the tough, I-don’t-play-well-with-fools persona, a softer man existed, a man who’d been buried by something and needed love to pull him out.

Seriously Kendall, you need to give up reading Nicholas Sparks’ romance novels.

Yes, she did, because she’d even caught herself looking for a reason to contact him, find a way to smooth things over. Like the last time went
so
well.

She couldn’t totally understand his anger or why he blamed her for the entire media’s behavior. Maybe if they could just talk he’d see she wasn’t like other journalists.
That Nicholas Sparks perfectly outrageous plot had crept in again.
In real life, people getting off to a bad start rarely ended up together. At least as far as she knew.

Kendall tapped away on her laptop while staring at the wall behind, hardly an inspirational view, but she found sometimes looking at nothing cleared her mind and helped her think. She looked at what she’d written. The cursor blinked accusingly at her.

Yes, she hadn’t achieved much on this story so far.
After writing a few more words, she backspaced until everything she’d just written disappeared, leaving her with an empty screen again.

She had to write something about the aftermath of the murders—labeled “The Mommie Killings” by one of the big presses—and she couldn’t find the words. She’d organized two interviews with neighbors living in Bentley Street West, but now struggled with remaining objective with something that tore at her heart.

This morning she’d met with Trip over coffee. She was surprised he’d agreed to meet her so soon after the latest murders. After seeing him, she realized why. His personal questions about her and her life outnumbered her interview questions. She hadn’t made a point of discouraging him, but she also hadn’t led him on. The way he asked the questions reminded her of a puppy bounding about in all directions, eager and excited.

Most of what he revealed about the three mass killings wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. She knew he had more details, and she needed more time to get him to open up.

How wily had she become?
She almost didn’t know herself. At some point, she would need to gracefully exit from his advances, but she only needed to think of her bills and Beastie Best’s constant email demands to keep her pushing forward.

Kendall caught herself wishing it were Lance O’Grady who wanted to meet with her. Not Trip. Nicholas Sparks was off the reading list for good if that’s what it did to her emotions.
Focus Kendall,
she told herself for the umpteenth time. She redeployed her mind to the blank screen and the story that was
not
writing itself.

Seven Days Later. What they lived through.

This wasn’t her headline; it was another of Beastie’s headlines. The woman loved to fling these titles at writers, which sometimes made difficult stories even tougher because they confined a story’s angle. This was absolutely the very last article she’d write on these murders. She’d told herself that several times already but today was it. Another nightmare last night was the last straw. Emotionally, she was burned out.

Kendall had done her homework. She’d managed to interview a teen relative of the “The Mommie Killings” the day before, even though
Sixty Minutes
hovered nearby with their checkbooks. Beverley still treated her like a long lost niece. She’d spent several hours again with her and another witness from the Amaretto Café murders, so she had material.

Today, though, the words wouldn’t flow. Her mind kept drifting back to the night random violence visited her own world. The question, could she have changed what happened, was never far from her thoughts.

Survivor’s guilt was a powerful emotion. Kendall could easily insert her own first-hand experience into this article. She would never do that, though, because she didn’t want to dig in to those still-raw feelings. Nightmares were bad enough.

The fear suffered by those in the Bentley Street West house, Amaretto Café, and in the Kenworth Home facility wasn’t unimaginable for her. As she’d written those words—
inconceivable terror
—the blinking cursor became her heartbeat.

For her, the terror
was
imaginable. Face your own mortality. Stared in death’s eye. These were clichés, yet they didn’t come close to how you felt when something random and violent came at you. In fact, you feel nothing at all—at first. First, you don’t understand what’s happening. You initially think somehow you’ve fallen into a television show and soon the director will call “cut,” and you’ll go home and talk about this crazy experience like it’s a ride at a theme park.

Later, of course, you feel as though your insides have ripped apart. Even days later adrenaline still explodes through your veins at the slightest sound.

“It’s shock,” her therapist explained. Your mind goes into autopilot as a way of clearing out anything unnecessary in order to survive.