The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (6 page)

“Drew? Is there something I’m missing?”

The smile left Drew’s face and it went back to the non-expression it was normally plastered with. “Oh, no. I’m sure I’ll have enough to do later, so I should get going.”

The second Cory was alone again, in a room with two dead women, she let the truth of reality hit her. It was time to let someone else in on what was going on.

Old Gary’s face looked like it had been set out in the sun and dried so that it could be sold as an exotic raisin. As Jon studied him, he waited for Louis to find the patience to raise his voice high enough so that communication between the three of them could take place. So far, in the near half hour that they had been trying to find out what the old man knew, the only thing Jon had for his troubles was a bunch of huhs and what’s that sonnys.

Louis said loudly, “Just give us the security tape from the day before yesterday.” At this point, the man was almost miming.

Jon took a step back away from the counter where it was obvious Louis was now going to have to barter for the information that they needed, and he let his eyes roam around the room. It was a small shop, almost like a garage with shelves lined with bits of junk someone might need if they were in a bind for nails.

His feet took him off down a short aisle, where there were several types of wire for sale. Most of the wire was sturdy enough to kill someone with, especially the ones made with metal allo
y
those were the ones with the tensile strength to really get the job done.

His cell phone rang and he answered it in an automatic sort of way, as if he’d been expecting it.

“Hello.”

“Jon.”

Jon’s face described his reaction to the sound of Cory’s voice on the other end of the line. It was definitely a switch from just a day ago, where he could have imagined jumping through the phone and strangling her for her emotional stubbornness. The sound in her voice was something that, at least while they had been close, had never been present before. It was fear.

“What’s going on Cory, are you hurt?”

“No, I’m okay. Just come to the office as soon as you can. Please.”

The line clicked and Jon was left standing in the middle of the hardware store staring at his cell phone until the screen light dimmed off. Cory never said please unless she had to or unless, it was something she really wanted and saying please was the only way she thought she would get it.

Jon moved from the aisle, pocketing his cell as he went, and as Louis was still engaged with Gary, he decided not to interrupt. Why ruin all the progress Louis was making with a mostly deaf old man? If he interjected any new information, the process would have to start all over again. Jon made a mental note that he would let Louis in on the deal later.

********
 

Cory was standing outside in front of the medical building when Jon was dropped off in a taxi cab. After she watched him pay for his ride, she took a seat on the curb that ran along the front of the parking lot. She felt too weary to stand.

Jon took a seat next to Cory, an arm going around her like it used to whenever he knew there was something that bothered her. During the days of David’s worst bouts of illness, when watching what he was going through had been too much to handle, they would sit like this, his arm gently around her and it would be enough to let her know that he was there and that he
loved her. Even now, with a divorce between them, it was still the same.

“I think the killer knows me.”

Jon’s brows knitted a quilt. Whatever he thought she was going to say to him, that was definitely not what he had been expecting. “What on Earth makes you think that? Do you know who it is?”

Cory shook her head. If she knew that, she’d have called him and told him where to find the person as fast as her neurons could give the order. She replied, “I found these little messages stuffed inside of the victim’s bodies. So far, I think I’m the only one who knows about them, but I have a feeling Drew knows. I also think that this killer has known me since high school.

“Jon, the last two victims were found in my mother’s old apartment, you remember, the one we stayed in during my senior year?”

Jon smiled. How could he forget? Once the ball had gotten in gear with them physically, they’d found all sorts of places to make out i
n
among other physical explorations.

He said, “Who do we know from high school that still lives here in Collie? The girls you were close with have all moved away. There’s Victoria, but she married that guy from Hadley last month and she’s living there with him.”

Jon noticed that Cory was hugging her knees, a thing she’d done whenever she was anxious or sad about something. The arm he had around her shoulders, which he was pleased hadn’t been asked to be removed yet, tightened. He asked, “What else is there, Cory?”

Cory stiffened, but then relaxed into the side of Jon’s body. He had a way of silently comforting her, or letting her feel like she was the safest person on the planet. She said, “One, one of the messages said that he was going to come for me. I don’t know what that means, but then none of this really makes that much sense. Why is this person doing this?”

Jon removed his arm so that he could look at Cory’s face by twisting the upper half of his torso and placing his hand behind her. He replied, “I don’t know why they’re doing it, but I do know that when a homicidal maniac gives you an expressed guarantee that he’s going to do you in, then he probably will. At least, he’ll try.” He cocked his head to the side. “What was the third message?”

Cory answered in a near monotone, “Number three, can you catch me?”

Jon swallowed, stared directly into Cory’s eyes and then said, letting his tone drift into his don’t-argue-with-me voice, “You’re going home with me.”

There was only one way that he would be able to protect Cory long enough to catch the killer, and that was having her right underneath his nose.

Cory stopped on the doorstep of Jon’s house, formerly their house, and waited for the feeling crawling around on her skin to stop. She had argued with him in the car, gave him a million reasons why she was able to take care of herself, but in the end, and she should have remembered this, Jon got his way. She just didn’t have the reserves to counter each one of his bazillion valid points.

“You coming inside, or do I have to drag you in?”

She actually didn’t know if she was going to come in. The idea of being inside of the house where David used to run around and play, the house where Jon had carried her over the threshold the night they were married. The memories were swirling around in her head and threatening to knock her over. Finally, and because she started feeling foolish just standing there, she walked inside.

The interior of the house was as she remembered it, right down to the curtains she’d picked out. The couch and loveseat were the same, just as the rug that said, “Welcome to our Family” was still sitting just inside the front door. It was like a museum dedicated to their life as it once had been.

“Want something to drink? I think I have a few beers in the fridge.”

Cory watched Jon move across the living room and into the kitchen and when he turned his head back at her for her answer, she shook her head. She could use a drink, but beer was not one of her indulgences. The stuff tasted like soap.

She walked over to the sofa and sat down, not knowing what to do with herself. It was uncomfortable here, regardless of the benefits to her safety, and she knew that this idea wasn’t going to work for long.

Jon caught Cory’s shift in mood as if it had been telegraphed to his brain. She wasn’t happy to be reminded of what their life had been like, shooting his hopes that she would realize how much she missed him and come back to him right out of the damn sky. He popped a tab to the beer he’d pulled from the fridge and joined Cory on the couch.

Jon wanted to talk about their encounter the night before, but as so many things he’d ruined by asking about them, he was hesitant to taint the memory with what she might say about it. For another thing, it probably wasn’t the best time. Cory had more than enough on her mind.

Cory was glad that Jon took the other side of the couch, because if he’d sat next to her, she might have another attack of hormones or whatever they were, and she’d jump him agai
n
not that she was ashamed of their limbs tangling with one another in the least.

She flinched as she felt the weight added to the couch shift in her direction. She assumed, since she wasn’t looking at him, that he’d gotten comfortable on his side, but if he thought to have a repeat performance of the heated event the night before she was going to have to stop him. Else that, or give in again and dig the emotions rumbling around in her stressed head an even deeper hole to live in. She risked a glance and saw that Jon had gotten up and was standing toward the edge of the couch headed back toward the kitchen.

Cory, to keep her mind off thinking anything, took her cell phone out of her coat pocket, which she’d just noticed she was still wearing, and checked her messages. Few people bothered to text her, since they knew she had little time to bother texting back, but nevertheless, there were people who left her little reminders of things she had to take care of.

The message staring up at her was not that of a person she recognized, and it was far from a friendly reminder.

Meet me at your place. I have another present for you!

Cory read over the message a few times, thinking each time that it might say something different or hold within it a little less darkness, but each time she let her eyes roam over the words, it told her that whoever this person was, their time was running shorter and shorter. Before long, the killer was going to get tired of the game they were playing and end it.

“Whatchareadin
g
”

A second before Jon would have seen the message Cory moved her finger over the power button at the top of her phone and the screen went black. She could hear Jon make a sound underneath his breath that sounded like a half-attempt at a swear and he moved back over to the side of the couch he’d regulated himself to.

Cory set her phone next to her as she looked to Jon. In less than half an hour, he was on his second beer. Toward the end of their marriage, Jon’s drinking had become more of a habit with him than had been comfortable. He was never drunk while he was at work, but once he’d walked through the door, he’d drink like a fish preparing to live its life on land.

“Don’t you think you should space those out some?”

Jon flicked an irritated eyebrow at his less-liquored inclined ex-wife. “I don’t think a few beers are going to do much to make matters worse.” He tilted the neck of the bottle in his hand toward his lips for emphasis. After he’d taken a sip, he added, “It helps me think.”

Cory sighed and moved from where she was perched over to Jon’s side of the couch and, without saying a word, took his beer from him.

Jon sat cock-eyed on his couch, the television in front of him set to a mindless channel for noise. His eyes were closed and it appeared to Cory as if he’d slipped into unconsciousness sometime in the last half hour of the program he’d been mildly interested in.

Cory thought that now was her chance to get away from Jon, that if she was going to make a break for her house and have a show-down with a killer that now would be the time to get her rear in gear.

Carefully, and because she knew Jon would wake up if she jostled him too much, Cory lifted herself from the couch and headed toward the back door of the house. She remembered that the front door, in the near silence, would creak when disturbed, and that the back door would be less of a risk. Over the sound of the television, the odds were that Jon would never hear the door opening.

She had a moment where she wanted to wake him up and tell him what she was planning to do, but the flash of Jon in the back of an ambulance waiting to have his day in the cold seat on her slab made the decision against it for her. Cory couldn’t risk his life any more than she would have wanted to risk someone else’s. The fact that she loved him solidified her course. Love wasn’t enough to keep them together, but it was enough to ensure that she’d not ask him to do something stupid. It didn’t mean that she couldn’t do something stupid.