Page 24 of In Her Bed

Font Size:

Page 24 of In Her Bed

The radio fell silent.Jake immediately accelerated, flipping on the cruiser’s lights and siren.

“So much for a quiet drive back,” he muttered, smoothly passing a truck that was slowing down and pulling to the side of the road at the sound of their siren.

Jenna’s mind raced through the implications.The crime scene had been marked off but not fully processed yet—standard procedure for a complex scene.A full check of everything could take a good bit of time.They’d focused on the immediate area where the body was found, but the entire property had to be considered part of the scene.If civilians had contaminated areas they hadn’t yet examined...

“This could compromise the entire investigation,” she said.

Jake nodded grimly.“Exactly what we needed—amateur true crime enthusiasts trampling all over our evidence.”

The landscape blurred as they sped toward the isolated radio tower where Marcus Derrick’s body had been found.The sun was getting lower.If they didn’t get the area around the tower cleared out before dusk, crowd control and evidence preservation would be all the more challenging.

Jenna tried to focus on the immediate problem rather than the frustrations of the day’s investigation.Lynch, Mickey, the vacuum-tube radio—all pieces of a puzzle that refused to form a coherent picture.And now, potentially crucial evidence might be compromised before they could examine it.

Jenna soon caught sight of the radio tower in the distance, its skeletal form silhouetted against the graying sky.

Jenna nodded, mentally shifting into crisis management mode.But beneath her focused exterior, questions continued to swirl.Who had killed Marcus Derrick and brought him from Cable County to this Genesius County radio tower?And why would anybody move a body that far?

Was Lynch truly their murderer, or was her intuition nudging her toward some as-yet-unseen facts about the case?And what evidence, potentially crucial to answering these questions, might now be trampled under the feet of morbidly curious trespassers?

***

The cooling evening air carried whispers and murmurs from the small crowd gathered near the radio tower.They were the determined ones who had hiked in from the roadblock, or even up the wooded hillside from the neighborhood below.

The man stood at its edge of the group, expressionless, watching the yellow police tape that separated them from the radio tower flutter in the gentle breeze.Around him, the onlookers pressed forward with morbid fascination, straining for a glimpse of the infamous spot where death had visited their quiet community.

Straggling wires still marked the spot where he’d left Marcus Derrick’s body hanging there on the tower.He adjusted his glasses, feigning the same casual interest as those around him.The performance was necessary.Expected.

A woman to his left clutched her handbag to her chest, her eyes wide as she recounted the details she’d heard on the local news.“They say he was posed, like some kind of sacrifice.”Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.“Something to do with radio waves.”

He didn’t correct her, though the misinformation tugged at his lips, threatening a smirk.The media never got the details right.They couldn’t understand the significance of what he’d done—what he was trying to achieve.

Three officers in uniform moved efficiently behind the police line, their faces set in grim determination.

He watched them with clinical detachment, studying their movements, their procedures.Knowledge to file away for future use.

The body was gone, of course—but not before he had tested its utility.The failure with Derrick gnawed at him—not the act itself, but the disappointing results.He had been so certain that Derrick’s body would be the right vessel, the perfect antenna.The man’s voice on the radio had resonated with such promise, carrying harmonics that seemed to align with the frequencies he sought.

But after the deed was done, after positioning the body with such care at the base of the tower, there had been nothing.No signal.No message from beyond the veil of ordinary reality.

Just silence.

Police sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder with each passing moment.Reinforcements, most likely, coming to control the expanding crowd.Time to leave.

He moved with unhurried steps, drifting away from the center of activity.His departure was as unremarkable as his arrival had been.Just another face in the crowd, satisfying a morbid curiosity before returning to an ordinary life.

The gravel crunched beneath his shoes as he walked the quarter-mile to his parked sedan.He’d chosen the place carefully—far enough to avoid any connection, close enough to walk without drawing attention.

The car door clicked open with a soft sound.He slid inside and closed the door, sealing out the world and its judgments.For a moment, he sat motionless, hands resting lightly on the steering wheel.His breathing was steady, controlled.

Derrick had been a miscalculation.A setback, not a defeat.The voice that had so entranced him over the airwaves—call sign Charlie Tango 4 Caesar Alpha—hadn’t translated into the physical medium he required.

The engine hummed to life with a turn of the key.He adjusted the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of his own eyes.They revealed nothing of the disappointment he felt, nothing of the anticipation building within him for his next attempt.

The car rolled forward, tires tracing a path down the access road that wound away from the hill.Behind him, the radio tower stood silhouetted against the darkening sky.He could imagine Derrick’s ghost lingering at its base.

As he merged onto the highway, streetlights began to flicker on, creating pools of artificial daylight on the asphalt.He reached for the console, pressing play on his music system.

A woman’s voice filled the car, rich and textured, carrying notes that seemed to resonate with the very air around him.Sandra Reeves.Former local celebrity, whose recordings had been featured prominently in his recent dreams.