The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (18 page)

“I found a heart necklace with an inscription on it inside of a tissue.”

Louis hadn’t been paying attention to the majority of the conversation since his mind was back in his bedroom thinking about the note on his bed and how strange it was. It didn’t make sense, even though he could admit that at first he had believed the worst.

The wording of the letter was strange, and it didn’t sound at all like something Reyna would write. It didn’t have a single drop of emotion in it, and the kindness that made up the majority of Reyna’s soul was absent. The fact that his room had been destroyed made little sense either; it just wasn’t Reyna‘s style.

“The inscription said,
for my daughter and my best friend, Happy Birthday.
”

Even though he hadn’t been paying close attention he knew the gist of the conversation, so when Cory recited the inscription she’d discovered on the heart necklace she’d found in their newest victim’s pocket, Louis perked up his ears.

“Reyna owns a necklace with that inscription,” he offered and even as the words left his mouth, he realized that it had been in the shape of a heart. Reyna had told him once that her mother had given it to her on the last birthday she’d had before her mother had died and that she wore it wherever she went. The night she’d found him attempting to kiss Rebecca, she’d flown into a fit of anger and snagged in on something on her way out of the bar and lost it, something she’d mentioned to him sadly just before they’d fallen asleep last night.

It was rare that
lightning struck his brain, but when it did, the flash was like seeing the universe in an instant and time could stop and stand still. Louis knew in his soul that he was seeing something important and possibly life changing.

Louis looked to Jon, who was staring at him as if he’d sprouted antlers. He knew something was up. Cory was doing the same thing, her brain more attuned to sudden shifts in knowledge than her husband.

“What is it Louis?”

“I think the killer is trying to frame my girlfriend and that she’s been kidnapped to make it look like she ran away.”

Even as the statement left his lips, as his brain and heart came together and knew it to be the truth, Louis tried to reject it. How could it be that he’d just found love, that the person he loved returned it to him, and that in an instant all of it could be destroyed?

Louis wanted to say something more, beg for both Cory and Jon to tell him than he’d lost his mind, but just as he would have tried, Rebecca appeared at their table, looking bright-eyed and bushy tailed.

“What in the hell are you doing here, and why the hell are you so late for your shift?”

Louis, surreally, calmly watched as Rebecca smiled and shook her car keys at Jon. “My right rear tire was flat, so I had to have it fixed. When I got to work, there were all these men wandering about excited about something. They yanked me aside and told me that they caught your killer. Isn’t that just the greatest news?”

Louis looked to Jon, who looked first to Cory and then to him and a world of words passed between them all. He was the first to stand, and then as Jon followed him, he was at his cruiser before Rebecca could have the chance to catch up with them. They now had a race on their hands against time, since if the murderer was at the station, then he wasn’t with Reyna and Reyna’s life was in danger.

Louis knew one thing, and if it was the
last thought he ever had, he’d make sure his ghost had it inscribed on his grave stone; there wasn’t a force in nature that was going to prevent him from getting Reyna back.

RED WIDOW KILLER

Louis couldn’t turn the ignition to the cruiser quick enough, and swearing, he finally got the vehicle to kick over just as Jon barely managed to plop his rear into the passenger’s seat.

“Louis, I know what you’re thinking, but buddy, you have to calm down. If you kill us before we get to the station, we won’t be doing anyone any good.”

Louis pressed his foot down on the gas pedal and the cruiser lurched and then began to speed through the parking lot of the restaurant. He replied, “You tell me
that if it was Cory, that you wouldn’t be doing the same thing.”

“This girl mean that much to you?”

“Yes.”

********

Louis didn’t have the mind to wait for Jon to get out of the cruiser, even though he was going to need him if he was to get within a foot of the Fed’s suspect, but the compulsion to look the bastard in the face and demand to know what he’d done with Reyna wasn’t he could ignore, let alone disobey.

The concept of love, the fact that he was just as susceptible to it as anyone else on the planet was a miracle in and of itself. He knew that this precious discovery was something monumental and that the person that inspired it in him couldn’t be lost to him. If he lost Reyna now, then he knew for certain that he would be the man
everyone thought he was.

As expected the lead Fed, the pompous one that had stopped them on their way out was now walking over to him as if he meant to question him again. Perhaps
he wanted to know if his lunch was digesting well.

Not in the mood to particularly be gracious, and because Travis would have rooted him on, as soon as the Fed was within range, Louis pulled his arm back and slugged him square in his arrogant mug. The man went down flat on his back like a dead tree, his suit withstanding the fall without so much as a single wrinkle.

Louis could feel eyes boring into him, and before he could be caught, he made for the most direct route through the station and to the only interrogation room that they had. Inside, handcuffed to a metal chair was a man he’d b never seen before. Instinct and rage took over his body, and he was grabbing the man before his brain could reason with the rest of him, and he was screaming.

“Where the hell is she, you piece of shit?! Did you think I wouldn’t find you? If you don’t start talking, I’m going to start to tear your goddamn head from your shoulders all slow like so you feel every last second of it just before you fucking die!” To emphasize his words, he shook the man in his hands violently. The
anger boiling inside of him threatened to steal his sanity, but more than that it threatened to make good on his promise of decapitation.

Louis, through the thick red haze of his wrath felt something press into the small of his back.

“So help me God, Louis, I love you as my brother but if you don’t let that man go I’m going to shoot you where you stand.”

Louis heard himself, and couldn’t recognize the voice that came out of him. “He has Reyna! There‘s no way in hell I‘m letting go of him!”

“Brother, let go of him. We can’t question him if he’s dead, and you’re about to do just that.”

Louis looked down at the mess he held in his hands and saw blood covering the light flesh tone of his fingers. He hadn’t realized he’d punched the man in the face, but he was sporting a broken nose and his lips looked like someone had pumped air into them. One of the man’s eyes was swelling closed and a large gash from where his college ring had caught his cheek was bleeding profusely. The man hadn’t been
able to speak because he’d begun to choke on his own blood.

Shocked that he’d been capable of beating a man near to death, Louis let go of his grip and as soon as he took a step backwards, Jon Harper, sheriff of Collie, had him pinned to the floor of the interrogation room and handcuffed.

“You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I provided them to you?”

The most Louis could manage before Jon picked him up off the floor was a nod.
 

********
 

“What in the name of the Virgin Mary were you trying to do, Louis? Do you know that I just barely got you off charges of attempted murder in the name that you were temporarily insane? Even that, you have to
spend the night in our custody until those damn Feds make sure you haven’t killed their suspect.”

Louis shook his head, not bothering to look in Jon’s direction. He didn’t know what to say in his defense. The only thing he knew was that he’d been prepared to kill someone with his bare hands because of the need to have Reyna back at his side. Love had been a mystery to him, it still was, and he’d had no idea that it could make him lose his mind.

“I love her, Jon. I don’t know what to do.”

“Look, you’ll make bail because I’m going to keep you in my custody and make sure you don’t run loose and try to beat someone else’s face in. If you shirk me, Louis, I’ll have no choice and you’ll go to the jail in Hadley. As it is, you’re in some deep shit.” Jon waited a second before he leaned in toward the bars he was on the proper side of and added, “But if I thought for one second I had the man in my hands that had taken Cory from me, I’d have done the same thing.” He sighed and backed away, looking thoughtful. “You never did tell me what made you think Reyna had been kidnapped.”

“When you called me yesterday morning and I was at the coffee shop, I had gone there to get Reyna some breakfast because she’d stayed the night with me after we’d made up from the big fight we had. I got home from the shop, found her gone and the room destroyed as if she’d thrown a fit and left. There was a letter on the bed telling me that she didn’t love me and deserved someone better.”

“If I hadn’t seen you beat the shit out of that man, I’d have said that was a plausible story. But I’ve met Reyna once or twice, and she was there at Travis’ going away party. She’s such a sweet girl, I don’t imagine her doing something like that.”

Louis nodded. “It doesn’t make sense; I know Reyna didn’t write that letter. If the letter hadn’t been there, I would have thought there’d been a struggle. I know Reyna was taken, and the fact that her necklace was found on a victim proves the killer was following her.”

Jon put a hand to his chin. “What if someone says that Reyna is the
killer, that she pretended to lose her necklace and then left it in the pocket of her victim on purpose?”

“I told you, I saw it drop to the floor of the bar. I would have picked it up, but I was too drunk. Rebecca had to drive me home that night, and considering that the whole fight was in part her fault, I thought it was only fair. That, and Reyna couldn’t have killed that guy or any of the other ones cause she was physically somewhere else when all of them died. She was either at work or with me.”

Jon shook his head and frowned sadly. As Louis looked at him, he knew that there was something he was avoiding voicing out loud. “Say what you’re thinking. I’m already past the point of being spared.”

“Cory told me that the victims, the ones we could identify, were not with the killer long once he decided to kill them. Louis, there’s a chance
”

“No.”

“Louis”

“I’d know if she were dead, Jon. I’d know it in my gut. She’s not dead, and every second I was sitting in this damn cell, is a second she’d somewhere lost and afraid. Get me the hell out of here.”

Louis stood from the bench that had been built into the wall of his cell and he came to a stop at the bars that separated him from Jon. He said, “If I had the strength, I’d bust out of here and find her no matter if they shot me full or holes on my way out or not. I can’t just sit here.”

“Believe me, if I could get you out faster I would, but if both of us go around breaking the law, then we won’t be able to help anyone. I’ll be here first thing in the morning, not a second later and I’d advise you not to get chatty with any of those idiots out there making a mess of my station since they might find more to tag onto your charges. I don’t think you know just how pissed they are at you.”

Reyna couldn’t see anything around her, and she couldn’t move save for an inch in any direction. When she’d woken up from the drugs that had been forced into her, she’d come aware that she’d been stuffed into some kind of wooden box. The image of a coffin, for the first few hours had hand her thrash and scream until she’d been thrown into a coughing fit and unable to move because she’d exhausted herself. To think that someone had put her into a pine box threatened to make her lose her mind, save for the absolute knowledge that Louis would come to find her even if he had to kill a few people to do it.

The love she felt for him dictated to her that she not give up, that because Louis wouldn’t give up on her that she wasn’t allowed to give up on him or herself. She had to fight, she had to do anything she could so that when he found her she was alive to throw herself at him and kiss him until her oxygen depleted.

Reyna could tell how long she’d been in the box. To her, time seemed to slow and speed up and then slow down to the point that making sense of what was going on outside of her tiny world was all but impossible. She knew that at times she wasn’t alone, that someone else was in the room with her, and that instead of suffocating like she was supposed to, that there was oxygen pumping into her space at regular intervals. Because she’d worked so long as a nurse, she could recognize the smell, and she knew that whoever had her had access to medical supplies.

From time to time Reyna tried to struggle, even if she knew that it was useless mostly just to keep her arms and legs from going numb. Whatever her container was made of, it had to be sturdy, since when she got into one of her sessions to attain freedom, she created one hell of a noise not to mention by the end she completely exhausted herself.

“I hope you’ve been a good girl. If you have, I’ll let you live a bit longer.”

There, again was the voice. Reyna knew now, that whoever it had been that had taken her from Louis’ bedroom had been a woman, since the sound of the
voice was light but not strained. If it was a man, the lighter high pitches would sound forced. The voice also sound knowledgeable, as if the person who owned it knew her personally and hated her with a passion. It made little sense to her, since there wasn’t a person she could think of that might hold that kind of negative emotion for her.

Reyna felt her box shift, felt it tremor and realized her captor was sitting on top of her.

“Did you hear me? Were you a good girl?”

Reyna knew for certain that the questions were to bait her, and no matter what she said, something horrible was going to happen to her. She remained silent.

Reyna felt her world shake again, this time she could hear the slaps to the wooden lid as someone smacked it as hard as they could.

“I said, have you been a good girl?! Answer me! Answer me, or I’ll
set you on fire! Now!”

“Yes!”

Silence followed her answer and Reyna prayed that she wasn’t about to experience her own death yet again. She had a feeling that the second time around was going to be far worse than the first.
 

*******
 

Louis strained to see the clock on the wall in the main room of the station house yet again for the twentieth time that hour. It was seventeen minutes past eight in the morning and he felt as if his nerves were going to make him fly apart. Jon had promised to crack him out of his cage in the morning, and here it was, morning and no freedom.

He realized, somewhat past his desperation to find Reyna that he’d done a seriously terrible thing. To beat someone’s face in was a crime, hell he’d busted plenty of men for the same thing after they’d had one too many to drink. However, he couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry for the man, no matter how hard he tried.

Louis sighed and turned away from his bars, not interested in looking at the faces of the FBI agents who were crawling around headquarters like a bunch
of ants training to be butlers. Their suits annoyed the hell out of him.

“Ready to go?”

Louis wheeled around as fast as his body allowed him. “Are you kidding? You’re late.”

“Sorry but I had to do some things before I came here, buddy. Number one was making sure you hadn’t been bumped into murderer during the night.”

Louis stared at Jon’s face. Reality was such a hard bitch to look at directly in the eye but he was going to do his best to try. He asked, “Well, is he alive?”

“It wasn’t as bad as all that. You managed to punch him all right, but because of the facial wounds and the man’s medication that made him bleed more than he ought to have, it made the wounds look more severe than they actually were. Sorry to say, but all you managed to really give him was a fat lip and a black eye.

“He won’t be pressing charges, since after they gave the man pain medication, he admitted to the murders and to taking Reyna. He’s saying in exchange for her location that he wants to make a deal.”

Jon’s face twisted as the hands he had around the bars of the cell turned white at the knuckles. He added, “I don’t like that bastard for this. He has crazy written all over him.”

Louis went to the bars and used his eyes to look at the lock that still had him contained within the cell. He coughed into his hand and said, “We can talk about this later, don’t you think? Let’s get our asses out of here.”

“Not so fast.”

That last had come from somewhere to Louis’ left and he let his eyes drift in that direction until they landed on the figure of the head agent in charge. He was sporting a decently colored black eye.

“I don’t believe we’ve met properly. My name is Agent Douglas, and this badge here,” he flashed it for emphasis,” allows me to say who comes and who goes from this station. And right now, I’m trying to figure out whether or not you’re going to get in the way of my investigation.”

Louis growled, literally growled. Whatever this love crap was that had filtered into his heart and mind and rearranged him forever was something that made him powerful. This new Louis couldn’t give a damn who this man thought he was, after all, he was just a man. He said, “Listen here you piece of shit, you’ll open that door or”

Jon moved to stand between him and Agent Douglas. “What he is trying to communicate to you Agent Douglas, is that he believes time is running out for a woman that was taken recently by the killer. Since you have him custody, Deputy Kale here thinks she is still alive.” Jon exhaled and added, “I think it might be a good use of our time if you let us look for her at the crime scenes. It would be a way for you to keep us under observation and let us keep someone else alive.”

Louis couldn’t see Jon’s face, but judging by the expression Agent Douglas was sporting, it wasn’t a very inviting one. One day, he’d have to learn how Jon did that.

“Fine. He’s all yours. If he takes one swing at another
agent, or steps out of line again, I’ll have him in jail so fast you won’t have the time to mop up his shit again.”
 

********
 

“I gave Rebecca a couple of days off. She’s a rookie, she doesn’t need to see those suited jackasses and think that’s the way a cop should behave. That, and she’s not learning the ropes as fast as she should.”

Louis glared at Jon. While Travis Harper was the younger of the two, he wasn’t so seriously minded with a pineapple up where the sun doesn’t shine that he couldn’t see when someone preferred silence to the sound of his voice. Jon Harper was beginning to get on his last nerve.

“Look man, we’re here at my place to look for clues. You talking to me isn’t going to get it done any faster, and it sure as hell isn’t going to help me find Reyna.”

Jon sighed and leaned against the wall near the door. “Are you sure she’s missing? You said you didn’t believe the note, that Reyna wouldn’t have written something like that, but man nothing in relationships plays by the rules.”

Louis stopped what he was doing. “Just shut up for a while, all right.”

The room, although it was obvious the boys from out of town had left their mark all over the place, didn’t seem to move anything around, only poke here and there to see if there was something to be found that was out of the ordinary. The blanket was still where it had been thrown, and in the corner, the letter he’d told them was a forgery was still crumpled where he’d left it. It was clear that there hadn’t been much of an investigation, which told him that the Feds didn’t put much stock in the fact that Reyna was missing.

Louis balled his fist until he felt his fingers go numb. The whole situation was so far out of hand that his brain was struggling to catch up with what was going on. Only a day ago, his life had looked like it was taking a turn into the extraordinary, that he’d finally found the one person on the planet that he could love, that loved him back for every bit of the man he was now and had been. Now, it was as if he’d fallen
asleep and fell into a nightmare that he couldn’t escape. The only thing his brain refused to acknowledge was the idea that Reyna was dead. Reyna had to be alive, since if she wasn’t then he wouldn’t be alive; he knew in his soul that if Reyna was lost to him forever, that his heart would stop beating because it would no longer have a reason to function.

He looked to Jon, who was still leaning against the wall that joined the frame of his bedroom door, and he stored the image of him as he was and then closed his eyes. What he was about to do was possibly the last thing he would do as a free man, but in all honesty, he knew that he wouldn’t find Reyna if he was under Jon’s watch. Jon had to abide by rules that no longer applied to him.

“Hey man, I’m going to step out of the room for a minute and hit the toilet.”

Jon checked his watch and then lifted an eyebrow. “When you get out, we’ll leave and check out the last crime scene. If there’s nothing here to find, then we should get to looking somewhere else. Believe it or
not man, I want to find Reyna as much as you do.”

Louis nodded, slid past Jon and then walked down the hall to his left to the bathroom. After he’d been taken out of his cell, he’d been given his personal effects back, and the one thing he hadn’t thought to do was to use his cell to call Reyna. At first, he hadn’t called her because he’d thought she might have really left him, and then he’d lost his mind and been put in a jail cell, so this was the first time he’d actually had the space in his brain to think of it.

If the truth was known, to him, the thought of calling Reyna’s cell, whether or not it was answered, was something to him akin to dread like going to the dentist. As soon as he was in his bathroom, he closed the door behind him and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.