The Fifth Victim (5 page)

The minute the mayor left, Tewanda brought two cups of coffee into Jacob’s office and handed one to him. He looked up from where he sat behind his desk and smiled at her as he accepted the coffee.

“He’s a real piece of work, isn’t he?” Tewanda said.

“Why, Ms. Hardy, saying something like that makes me think you don’t like our mayor.”

“Like him?” Tewanda harrumphed. “The man’s a bigot, a wife beater and a—”

“Don’t hold back, tell me what you really think of him.”

“I hope Cindy Todd has run off with somebody and stays gone for good.”

“If she has run off with some guy, I wish she’d left Jerry Lee a note or something. As it is, he’s going to run us crazy if she doesn’t come home.” Jacob sipped on the hot coffee and sighed with pleasure when he realized it was fresh. “You made a fresh pot. Thanks.”

“As soon as Jasmine’s opens for breakfast at six, I’ll run out and get us some sausage biscuits,” Tewanda said. “Until then, I’ve got peanut butter and crackers if you want some.”

“Nah, thanks.” He held up the orange UTC mug. “This will tide me over for the time being.”

Tewanda glanced down at the photographs spread out on Jacob’s desk. Crime-scene photos of Susie Richards’s mutilated body.

“Makes me sick at my stomach just to look at those,” she said.

Jacob gathered up the photographs, slid them into a folder, and laid them aside. “We did everything we were supposed to do, but I doubt it will be enough to catch this guy. He didn’t leave us much to go on. He covered his tracks like a pro, which tells me he’s done this sort of thing before.”

Tewanda shivered. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

“Yeah. If he’s done it before, he’ll do it again. I just hope we find him before another innocent person is killed.”

After a restless night, Jazzy woke at dawn. She had slept an hour, woke, and thought about Jamie. Then she’d slept another couple of hours, woke, and thought about Jamie. The pattern had repeated itself all night—except for when Big Jim’s telephone call woke her around one-thirty.

Had she seen Jamie? Hell, yes! He’d come by Jazzy’s Joint around ten-thirty. One look at him and her stomach had tied in knots. Even now she wasn’t sure whether the reaction had been lust or fear. Perhaps both.

He’d been so damn sure of her that she’d derived a great deal of pleasure from telling him to leave her the hell alone. He had pressed her; she’d retreated.

“I’m over you,” she’d told him. “I’ve moved on. So don’t think you can walk back into my life and crawl back into my bed. Never again!”

Half the patrons in Jazzy’s Joint had heard her screaming at him. She didn’t care. The whole damn town knew their sordid history, knew she’d gotten pregnant with Jamie’s baby when she was seventeen, knew his grandmother had forbidden him to marry her. Most folks thought she’d had an abortion and she’d never told them any different. Only a handful of people knew the truth—Aunt Sally, Ludie, Genny, and Jacob. She’d miscarried at three and a half months. A part of her heart had died with that sweet little baby.

As she climbed out of bed, the chill in her bedroom encompassed her. She reached out and lifted her robe off the foot of the bed, then slipped into it as she headed for the bathroom. After relieving herself, she went to the tiny kitchen in her second-story apartment over Jasmine’s and hurriedly prepared the coffeemaker.

She glanced out the window facing the east and saw the first faint glimmer of dawn. Was Jamie asleep at home with his latest fiancée, or was he in bed with the woman named April or Amber or something that started with an A and had a cutesy sound to it? He was with one or the other, Jazzy thought. He’d made love to one of those women, held her, kissed her, and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. That woman could have been her. All she’d had to do was welcome him back into her life. He’d be with her now and every night for as long as he was in town, if only she’d said yes.

Her body ached for his.

Jazzy opened the refrigerator, took out a carton of orange juice, and drank straight out of the carton.

Was it Jamie her body ached for or was it just a man? Any man? She hadn’t been with anyone in a long time. Despite what people thought—that she was a slut—Jazzy took sex seriously. Over the years, there had been a few men other than Jamie, but not many. And she’d cared about each of them, had hoped for a future with each of them, and had been disappointed by each of them.

A part of her might always love Jamie, but she wasn’t in love with him anymore. He was poison to her. Every time he breezed into town, he came to her and renewed her hope for something real and lasting between them. But not this time. Not ever again. She’d cried her last tear over Jamie Upton!

Dallas woke instantly when he heard the woman’s screams. He shot straight up in bed. For a moment he didn’t remember where he was.
You’re in Genny Madoc’s home in Tennessee, in the mountains
, he reminded himself. Good God, had that been Genny screaming? He jumped out of bed, slid into the slacks he’d tossed across the cedar chest at the foot of the bed last night, and then eased his Smith & Wesson semiautomatic from his hip holster and raced out into the dark hallway.

“Genny?”

Silence.

“Genny?” he called again as he rushed toward her bedroom.

He knocked on the door. No response. He knocked again. Drudwyn growled. And then he heard a soft, weak voice.

“Help me,” she said.

He flung open the door, not knowing what to expect. A kerosene lamp’s dim glow shimmered over the room, illuminating the mantel on which it rested and casting shadows across the wooden floor and over the flowery wallpaper. Genny lay in the middle of the bed, unmoving, rigid, her gaze focused on him as he made his way to her.

Drudwyn growled when he approached the bed.

Genny closed her eyes and instantly the dog quieted. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the animal had read Genny’s mind.

As he leaned over her, his gaze fixed to hers, he asked, “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Are you in pain?”

She nodded, then whispered, “Yes.”

Okay, he knew a little first aid, enough to get by in a pinch, but if there was something seriously wrong with Genny, then they were in big trouble.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he asked. “And what can I do to help you?”

“Stay with me.” She glanced at the edge of the bed.

“Do you need me to help you to the bathroom?” Maybe she had a stomach virus or food poisoning.

“No, I’m not sick.” Her voice was breathless, as if she’d run a race and was now exhausted.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Is the telephone working?” She looked at the extension on the bedside table.

Dallas lifted the receiver to his ear. Dead. “No. It’s still out.”

“Try my cell phone.”

“Where is it?”

“In the drawer in the nightstand.”

He opened the drawer, removed her small phone, and looked to her for instructions.

“Call Jacob.” She recited the number.

“Damn,” Dallas said. “Still no reception.”

Tears flooded Genny’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. He’d be too late to save her even if we could get in touch with him.”

Dallas tossed the cell phone back into the drawer, then sat down on the bed beside Genny. “What are you talking about? Who couldn’t Jacob save?”

“The woman he’s going to kill.”

“I don’t understand—”

“I had another dream. Another vision. He’s going to kill again. He may already have sacrificed her.”

Dallas grabbed Genny and jerked her into a sitting position. With his hands clutching her slender shoulders, he glared into her mesmerizing black eyes.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I saw her on the altar. Windows with light. Colors. Stained-glass windows maybe. And the sword. He was excited. Waiting. Waiting for the right moment.”

What the hell was going on? What sort of crazy dream had Genny had? “You must have had a nightmare,” Dallas said. “With a killer on the loose, your imagination kicked into overdrive.”

“It wasn’t just a dream…it was…” her voice faded.

Suddenly Genny fainted. She fell into Dallas’s arms. Delicate. Fragile. Helpless. Dallas cursed loudly.

Chapter 5

For a split second Dallas couldn’t think straight. All he could do was react to the feeling of having this beautiful woman in his arms. Although she was small and slender, her body rounded in all the right places. At the present moment her high, full breasts were pressing into his naked chest. And her long, silky black hair draped over his shoulder. He took a deep breath, eased Genny off him, and laid her gently back on the bed.

She’d said that it wasn’t just a dream. What did that mean? Some maniac had cut a young girl wide open out in the woods in the county where Genny lived. Her cousin was the sheriff and had probably told her more than he should have about the gruesome murder. Undoubtedly she’d had the recent killing on her mind when she’d gone to bed, and her subconscious had created a hideous nightmare.

He could still hear the panicked scream that had awakened him. Genny had been terrified. But once she’d fully awakened and realized she was not only safe, but also not alone, she should have recovered quickly. She hadn’t. She’d fainted dead away, as if for some reason she was totally exhausted.

While she lay there, her eyes closed, her breathing slow and steady, he studied her face. The face of an angel. His gaze traveled downward and came to a screeching halt where her breasts rose and fell with each breath she took. Her nipples were tight, peaking against the soft cotton material of her long-sleeved pajama top.

Dallas swallowed hard. Now was not the time to get all hot and bothered over a fine piece of ass. Two seconds after the thought flashed through his mind, he grimaced. Why the hell had he done that—reduced his attraction to this woman as nothing more than lust? It had become a fatal flaw with him. Whenever he found himself more than mildly interested in a woman, he convinced himself that there was nothing emotional about it, simply normal male libido.

Genny groaned softly. Her eyelids fluttered.

Dallas caressed her cheek.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. The fear he’d noticed only moments ago was gone, replaced by weariness.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Tired. Very tired.”

“I don’t understand. Why would a nightmare drain you this way?”

“They always leave me very weak.”

She tried to lift her hand, to reach out for him. When he realized how difficult the effort was for her, he grabbed her hand in his and held it against his chest.

He still didn’t understand. It had to be highly unusual for a nightmare to devastate a person the way it had Genny.

“What can I do to help you?”

“Stay with me. Please. Until I recover.”

“This has happened to you before?”

She nodded. “Many times.”

“How long will it—”

“Several hours.”

“Rest. I’ll stay right here.”

“Dallas?”

“Yes?”

“From time to time, try the phones. Jacob needs to know.”

“About your dream?”

She nodded. “About the second sacrifice.”

Again, the blood ran cold through Dallas’s veins. Damn! Half a dozen wild thoughts went through his head. The second sacrifice…the second sacrifice.

“Genny?”

When she didn’t respond, he glanced down at her and realized she had fallen asleep. He lowered her arm down beside her, then eased off the bed and paced around the bedroom. Drudwyn’s keen eyes followed his every move.

“What’s going on with her, boy?” he asked the dog.

Drudwyn rose, came forward, and halted at Dallas’s side. Two concerned gazes met, locked, and exchanged an odd sense of understanding. Both would protect Genevieve Madoc to the death.

“Hell,” Dallas cursed under his breath. Protect this woman to the death? Where had that thought come from? What was wrong with him? He barely knew her, had met her only hours ago.

Dallas shoved back the lace curtains at the long, narrow windows and gazed outside at the dawn light creeping up and across the horizon, spreading a pale pink glow over the dark gray sky. The snowstorm must have ended sometime during the night, but as best he could make out in the semi-darkness, a blanket of white covered everything in sight.

Letting the curtain fall back into place, Dallas closed his eyes and tried to think straight. He had allowed this situation—being marooned for a night with a good-looking woman who somehow had very quickly put the hoodoo on him—to muddle his thought processes. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Genny was a witch who had cast a spell over him.

Dallas chuckled. Yeah, sure. A witch? He didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t experience with his five senses. If he couldn’t see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, or feel it, then it didn’t exist. In the real world in which he lived, there were no witches, no faith healers, no ghosts, no psychics, no guardian angels. That sort of stuff was for saps, for the poor misguided souls who couldn’t cope with reality.

He glanced around the room. Feminine, but not frilly. Antique furniture. Lace curtains. Pale pastel colors blended with white. When he spied a large, comfortable-looking chair in the corner, he went over and sat, then lifted his big feet onto the round ottoman. A chill rippled through him, reminding him he was bare from the waist up. He dragged the white crocheted afghan off the back of the chair and wrapped it around him.

As soon as the phones were working, he’d put in a call to a wrecker service and get his rental car hauled out of the ditch, then he’d thank Genny for her hospitality and get the hell out of here as fast as he could. His business was with Sheriff Butler, not Butler’s bewitching cousin.

He needed to make a definite connection between Susie Richards’s murder and Brooke’s murder. Over the past eight months, since his young niece had been brutally killed, he had spent every minute he wasn’t working to try to unearth any evidence that might point to her killer. Sacrificial killing was not unheard of; in fact there had been more in the United States than Dallas had suspected. Many had been connected to some sort of pagan devil worship, but certainly not all. Over the past eight years there had been twenty-four unsolved cases involving murders that were very similar to Brooke’s. And the oddest thing about twenty of these murders was that they appeared to have taken place in sets of five.

With Teri’s and Linc’s assistance these past few months, Dallas had put together a startling hypothesis: someone sacrificed five women living in the same area over a period that averaged between three to six weeks, then disappeared only to show up in another region a year or two later and repeat the same scenario. All these facts had come together only a couple of weeks ago, and Dallas hadn’t had the chance to personally travel to each area and go over all the evidence.

But if his supposition was correct, and if Susie Richards was the first victim, then that meant four women in Cherokee County were in danger. And it also meant that Brooke’s murderer was here.

Deputy Bobby Joe Harte knocked on Jacob’s office door, then poked his head in and said, “Chief Watson just called. He said for you to meet him over at the Congregational Church ASAP. They got a dead body in the church and it looks like the same MO as the Susie Richards’ case.”

“What?”

“That’s all he said. Just told me to tell you to get your ass over there pronto.”

“Damn! What’s going on around here? We haven’t had a murder in Cherokee Pointe in years and now we have two in the county in forty-eight hours.”

Jacob strapped on his hip holster, put on his leather jacket, and yanked his Stetson off the hook by the door, then headed through the outer office. Once outside, he moved carefully over the icy sidewalk until he reached his truck. His booted feet made large, deep impressions in the snow piled up along the edge of the street. He unlocked his black Dodge Ram, climbed inside and started the engine. While sitting there, letting the engine idle and warm, he allowed his mind to wander, allowed himself to question his decision to run for sheriff this past year.

He’d been born and raised in Cherokee County, a poor boy, a quarter-breed, a young hellion who’d joined the navy at eighteen. Ten months ago, when he’d left the service, put his years as a SEAL behind him and come home, he’d been hailed as a hero. When Farlan MacKinnon had approached him about running for sheriff, he hadn’t seriously considered the offer of his backing. But Farlan had been insistent. And what Farlan wanted, he usually got. One of the two richest men in the county, and the most influential man in his political party, Farlan had promised Jacob that if he ran for office, he’d win. The old man had been right. Now Jacob wondered why the hell he’d let Farlan and his cohorts talk him into this job.

A horn honking behind him brought Jacob back to the present moment. He glanced through his partially defrosted back window and saw Royce Pierpont, in his silver Lexus sedan, throw up a hand and wave at him. Jacob returned the wave. Why was Royce bothering to open up his antique shop today? Jacob wondered. There wouldn’t be any tourists in town with weather like this, and probably not many locals either.

Jacob shifted the gear into reverse, backed up, and headed down the street, going slow and easy over the thin sheet of ice still clinging to the asphalt.

A large brick structure that had been built in the early twentieth century and modernized from time to time, the Congregational Church was on the corner of Monroe and Highland. Jacob parked his truck, got out, and headed up the sidewalk. Policemen swarmed like bees inside and out. Looked like the entire Cherokee Pointe police department was here.

Chief Watson met Jacob in the vestibule the minute he entered the building. “Glad you’re here,” he said. “It’s a bloody mess in there.”

“Bobby Joe said you mentioned that this murder was similar to Susie Richards’—”

“Another sacrificial killing,” Watson said. “I saw the pictures of Susie Richards your department took, but I’m telling you that unless you see it for real, you can’t imagine how bad it is.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Jacob steeled himself to view another horrific crime scene.

Chief Watson led Jacob into the sanctuary. Morning sunlight flooded through the stained-glass windows, casting bright rainbows over the wooden pews with their red velvet seats.

“She’s up here, on the altar,” Watson said.

“Hmm.”

Several members of the forensic crew busied themselves gathering evidence. Jacob moved closer, took a quick look, and glanced away.

“Cindy Todd.”

The mayor’s wife lay naked atop the altar, her calves and feet hanging off the end, a gaping wound from breasts to pubic area glistening with blood and exposed entrails.

“It’s enough to turn a man’s stomach,” Watson said, his face pale and sweaty.

“Has anyone contacted Jerry Lee?” Jacob asked.

“I called him right before I called you. Told him to come down to the police department, but I didn’t give him any specifics. Just told him it was important.”

“He came by my office early this morning looking for her.”

“You don’t reckon Jerry Lee could have—”

“Not his style,” Jacob said. “He’d have either shot her or beat the hell out of her. Besides, this has all the earmarks of being identical to Susie Richards’ murder.”

“You think we got ourselves a serial killer here in Cherokee Pointe?”

Jacob shook his head. “Too soon to make that kind of judgment. Could be some sort of cult thing.”

“You mean one of them devil-worshiping cults?”

“Just a possibility.” Jacob glanced around and quickly spotted the church’s new minister and his wife huddled together toward the back of the sanctuary, a police officer speaking to them. “Who found the body?”

“Reverend Stowe,” Watson said. “The guy’s pretty shook up, but then who wouldn’t be?”

“What’s his wife doing here?”

“After he called us from his office down the hall there”—Watson indicated the location of the office with a nod of his head—“he went back home and waited for us. He and Mrs. Stowe came back over here together.”

Jacob studied the Stowes for a moment before turning his attention to the chief. “I think we probably need some help. Neither your department nor mine is equipped to handle this sort of crime, especially not now that there have been two identical murders.”

“Don’t go putting us down,” Watson said. “I’ve got no intention of calling in outside help. Not yet.”

“Do you think your department can handle this case if it turns out we’re dealing with a serial killer?”

“Hellfire, Jacob, I thought you said it was probably a devil-worshiping cult.”

“I don’t know for sure. And that’s the problem. I’m new at this job, and my experience in matters like this is nil. The resources of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department is limited. And I’m not too proud to ask for help when I need it.”

“Then, boy, you go ahead and call for help. I don’t need any. I’ve been police chief for fifteen years. I know my way around a murder investigation.”

Jacob knew better than to argue with Roddy Watson, the stubborn, narrow-minded, ignorant son of a bitch. “Whatever you say.”

Just as Jacob turned to leave, Jerry Lee Todd came storming into the church. When several policemen tried to stop him, he shoved them aside and when they moved to overpower him, Chief Watson motioned for them to leave the mayor alone. Jerry Lee ran toward the altar.

“Hold up there,” Watson called. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Is it her?” Jerry Lee asked. “Is it my Cindy?”

“Yeah, it’s Cindy,” Watson replied. “Believe me, Jerry Lee, you do not want to—”

“What happened? Is she really dead?” Jerry Lee barreled past the forensic team, taking no heed of their requests for him not to disturb the scene.

Jerry Lee skidded to a halt when he saw his wife’s mutilated body. “Cindy! Oh, God, Cindy!”

“Hell,” Watson murmured.

Jacob rushed forward and grabbed Jerry Lee’s shoulder, stopping him from getting any closer to Cindy’s body. Jerry Lee spun around, grief and fury in his eyes. “Let me go, damn you. I’ve got to see her, talk to her, touch her.”

“No,” Jacob said. “What you’ve got to do is let the police do their job so they can find the person responsible.”