Was that all it had been? He and Cord had butted heads in the beginning, but during the cases they’d worked, they’d settled into a cordial relationship and developed mutual respect. Things might have been turned on their heads now. Time would tell.
Thunder rumbled and dark clouds cast eerie shadows across the sharp peaks and ridges of the mountain. Ellie turned onto a narrow winding road that looked as if it went nowhere. Overgrown bushes choked the shoulder of the road, and the graveled surface was pocked with potholes.
“I see why he’d choose this area,” Derrick said.
“Off the grid.”
Derrick glanced up from his tablet where he’d been researching Joe’s background. “It looks like Joe and his mother lived here before they moved to that farm.” He rubbed a hand across his beard stubble. “She was definitely the woman in thosephotos I saw, the one dressed like a hooker and wearing red stilettos.”
“Where is she now?”
“According to this, she abandoned him when he was twelve. DFACS found him alone at the house after a teacher reported his absence from school for seven days. They sent him to live with a grandmother who lived in Brambletown. She died when he was seventeen and by then, he’d aged out of the system. At fourteen, he started helping out at the cemetery doing lawn maintenance.”
Gravel spewed from her tires as the Jeep chugged up the unpaved road. Around a bend, she spotted a long driveway flanked with pines and more bushes and barreled up it hoping they weren’t too late for Carrie Ann.
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE
Bush Road
Memories of this godawful house bombarded him as he dragged Carrie Ann from the back of the truck. Her eyes were practically swollen shut from crying and her fingers looked raw and had been bleeding from clawing at the sides of the truck.
“It’ll be over soon,” he murmured as he yanked her hair and threw her over his shoulder.
She kicked and beat at him with her bound hands and feet, but he simply laughed. She was a scrawny girl although she and Kat wolfed down fries like they hadn’t eaten in months. It showed on Kat just like it did Ida, but either Carrie Ann had good genes or she was one of those teenagers who puked after a meal just to look like a twig.
As he walked past the rotting house, he was swept back in time. He could hear the floor squeaking inside as his mother’s friends showed up. Could see the closet where he’d been locked and the light that had burned out overhead, pitching him in darkness for hours while he listened to his mother and her lover bang the walls with the bed or the table as he ground inside her.
Carrie Ann whimpered through the gag, but she could cry and scream for all he cared. No one was close enough to hear her. Just like no one knew he’d spent the worst years of his life on this land.
Where he’d actually killed his first victim. Where he’d brought his second.
A noise sounded in the distance. He froze. Carrie Ann slugged him in the middle of the back and that pissed him off. The noise again… A car motor… gravel slinging.
Shit. Someone was coming. Who the hell?
He shuffled toward the shed out back, opened the door and started to toss Carrie Ann inside. She cried out but he slapped her so hard her head lolled back, and she passed out. If the police had found him, the shed was one of the first places they’d look. Breath panting out, he hauled the girl into the woods. A mile in and he spotted the pond he’d fished in as a kid.
Scum floated on the top and sticks protruded from the water. Behind him, car doors slammed. Voices filtered through the woods.
“Police,” the female detective shouted. “We know you’re here, Jones, and you have Carrie Ann. Make it easy on yourself and put an end to this now.”
He’d put an end to it. He wanted to slide the scarf around Carrie Ann’s neck and watch her eyes bulge as she struggled to breathe.
But he didn’t have time to take it slow.
The pond beckoned. Frogs chirped. A water moccasin slithered across the surface. The murky stench of pond scum wafted in the air.
He crossed to the pond and tossed the girl inside. Bound, gagged and unconscious, she began to sink below the dirty water.
Dammit, he’d forgotten to take her shoe. Those glorious red boots. He couldn’t leave without one.
He dragged her by one foot and yanked off the boot, then made a run for it through the woods while her body slipped below the water. His mother’s old car remained hidden in the woods where he’d covered it with brush.
He’d been hiding out along the trail for years now. He knew where he’d go to lie low until he could get away.
Ida’s and Kat’s faces taunted him. Ida hadn’t been his first choice. He’d only married her because she’d gotten knocked up.
It was the other girl Ruth he’d wanted. Not only had she turned him down, but she’d laughed at him. Laughed for fuck’s sake.
