The Quiet Bones Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Quiet Bones

  Wren Delacroix, Book Two

  by V. J. Chambers

  THE QUIET BONES

  © copyright 2019 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “Whoa,” said Wren Delacroix, taking the cardboard cup away from her mouth and looking at it. “What is this?”

  “Sea salt coffee,” said Detective Caius Reilly, turning the steering wheel of his car. “Angela said she’s been wanting to make it for someone, and she thought you’d like it, since you’re adventurous about your coffee.”

  “It’s amazing,” said Wren. The coffee had a salty cream mixed with a barely sweetened bitter dark roast. The salt made the rest of the flavors bright and explosive on her tongue. “I could drink this again.”

  “Whoa, a repeat?” Reilly grinned at her. “I didn’t think you ever had the same coffee drink twice.”

  “Oh, shut up, Mr. Ginger Latte. You’re in a rut.” Wren settled back into the passenger seat of Reilly’s car, looking out the window at the early morning light.

  “I’m not in a rut. I know what I like,” said Reilly. “There’s a difference.”

  “Sure.” Wren didn’t sound convinced.

  “Hey, if you keep hating on my coffee choices, I might stop buying you coffee,” said Reilly. “Think how that would feel. I’d roll up to your house and be drinking my coffee and have nothing for you.”

  “And then I’d force you to stop someplace and let me buy coffee. Morning without coffee is like apples without… something that goes really well with apples.” She grimaced. “It’s too early in the morning for off-the-cuff analogies.”

  “Peanut butter?” said Reilly. “Caramel?”

  “You said there was a YouTube video,” said Wren.

  “Oh, right,” said Reilly.

  He got his phone out of his pocket and unlocked it. “It should be right up on the app. You might have to pull it up—”

  “Got it,” said Wren, turning his phone to landscape. She took another sip of her coffee and then hit play on the YouTube video.

  Immediately, the screen was filled with a guy in a gray hoodie. He was lit from behind, so his face was entirely in shadow. Behind him, there was a brick wall that had been tagged with a lot of graffiti.

  The man began to speak, his voice distorted and deep. “Hello. I am the heir to the killers of the tri-state area. I am the son of Lucas John Jackson, Oscar Robinson, and even David Song. I fulfill their legacy and kill when they cannot. You will find my first victim behind the practice football field at Lingandale High. She is only the first of many. I will kill them all and no one will be able to stop me, not even the authorities that seek to. Try and find me, police, FBI, CIA. I will not be found.”

  The screen went black.

  A letter K appeared in the middle of the screen.

  That was the end of the video.

  Wren raised her eyebrows at Reilly. “Well, then.”

  “Yeah, it’s short and to the point,” said Reilly. “It probably wouldn’t matter to anyone if they hadn’t just found a body out behind the practice field at Lingandale High. That’s where we’re heading right now. They’re at the scene waiting for us to look around. The minute the video went up, someone called me. They want the task force on this from the get-go.”

  “Well, that’s good. We both came in late on the last case,” said Wren. “Being there from the beginning will make our job easier.”

  “Definitely,” said Reilly. “I guess they heard about us closing the case out here, and they want our help. It’s a good sign. Sometimes the local department is hostile to us coming in.”

  “Oh, like here in Cardinal Falls?” said Wren.

  Reilly grimaced. “Hey, the local boys aren’t all bad.”

  “With you,” said Wren. “They hate me.”

  “They just need to get to know you,” said Reilly. “They wouldn’t hate you then.”

  “I don’t know, it’s been a long time,” said Wren, who’d grown up in the area. She decided to change the subject. “The video’s a little hyperbolic. He’s cocky, thinking he can outsmart everyone. And it’s funny that he thinks the CIA would be after him.”

  “That mean anything?”

  “Maybe he doesn’t really know what the CIA does,” she said. “He could be stupid. Or young.”

  “What do you think about the K?”

  “I have no idea. I guess it’s a signature of sorts,” she said. “What do we know about the victim?”

  “Her name’s Bristol Cannon,” said Reilly. “She was a student at the high school. She apparently got up early every morning and went out to run the cross-country track at the school. They found her body around 5:00 AM, and she hadn’t been dead for long. It looks as though the killer surprised her there, dragged her off into the woods between the track and the practice field and raped and killed her. That’s just preliminary observation from what I’m hearing.”

  “And when did the YouTube video go up?”

  “Not sure,” said Reilly.

  She clicked around on the phone and was able to find the answer. “It’s been up for about an hour. Which means that the killer had a pretty tight window of time to make this video, edit it, and then put it up on YouTube.”

  “Unless he made it ahead of time.”

  “Could be,” said Wren. “Except…”

  “What?”

  “I need to see the scene first,” she said. “I’m not sure, but something feels a little weird about that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Um, I don’t want to say yet,” she said.

  “Weird meaning what?”

  “Look, Reilly, I assume you want me to try to put together a profile on this killer? I’m trying to do that, and I’m pulling together bits of information here and there, and I want to get it right.”

  “Okay,” said Reilly. “Drink your sea salt coffee and keep your own counsel, then. I’ll just drive.”

  She sighed, rolling her eyes. She did drink some more coffee.

  * * *

  The scene was a horror show, and Reilly wasn’t prepared for it. He thought he would have been ready for anything after their last case, which involved finding the bodies of five girls, not a single one older than twelve. Those little bodies had haunted Reilly’s nightmares, but this was worse in some ways.

  For one thing, Bristol was still quite young. She was only seventeen. She was practically a child as well. For another, it was a messy, bloody scene.

  Say what you wanted about Major Hill, he had been very tidy with his killing. No blood. No fluids. The bodies dressed and posed. Almost… artful.

  This was something else.
/>   Bristol lay face down in the grass, totally naked. She’d been shot in the back of the head and there was blood matted in her hair and smeared over her back. Her legs were spread and there were dirty streaks on her thighs and buttocks. In the morning light, she looked so small and pale and ugly lying like that. She’d just been left there, like roadkill.

  Reilly felt ill. Not stomach-churning ill, like he’d toss his coffee, but just generally disgusted with the state of the universe that this kind of shit even happened.

  Wren, on the other hand, was crouched down, taking in everything with an almost eager expression on her face. She looked everything over, moving her head this way and that like a curious bird.

  That was a little weird, sure, but then Reilly was weird too. He crouched down next to her. “So? You got that profile yet?”

  She turned on him. “No.”

  “Detective Reilly?” said a voice.

  Reilly straightened. “Yes? Detective Gamsey, right?”

  Gamsey nodded. He was a little pudgy, hair going thin on top of his head. “That’s right. I don’t mean to rush you at all, but we’re wondering about how much longer you’ll need with the body.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure,” said Reilly. “My associate, Wren Delacroix, she takes as much time as she needs, so—”

  “I’m good.” Wren stood up, facing Gamsey. “You guys have taken pictures, right?”

  “Yes, we’re ready to remove the body to the morgue,” said Gamsey. “But, as I said, I’m not trying to rush you or anything. It’s just if we could get a ballpark—”

  “No, take her,” said Wren. “There’s got to be evidence on her body. You see the finger smears?” She pointed. “Killer like this will have left a lot behind. We can probably have this tied up with a little lab testing.”

  Gamsey raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you think so?”

  “I do,” said Wren.

  * * *

  “Nothing?” said Wren to Jennifer Starnes, who worked in the morgue at the local police station. The task force had to rely on the resources of the police departments it worked with. They didn’t have labs of their own or anything like that.

  “Nothing,” said Jennifer. “There’s nothing left behind. I mean, we’ve swabbed for DNA, so we can search for that, but it looks as though the killer was wearing gloves, and I would say that the penetration of the vagina and the anus were done with an object, probably some kind of shovel handle, judging from the wood splinters left behind.”

  Wren shuddered in spite of herself. “But you’re saying that the evidence suggests that was done post mortem.”

  Jennifer nodded. “Yes. Likely the time line is that he came up behind her, forced her to move off the track, shot her in the back of the head, and then stripped her and assaulted her.”

  Wren bit down on her bottom lip. “And then he left her there. He did it and ran. But he wore gloves.”

  “It looks that way. The smears of dirt on her legs have traces of powder from the gloves,” said Jennifer.

  Wren shook her head. “It’s all very odd.”

  “There’s also some evidence of cleanup in a few places,” said Jennifer. “A few discarded bleach wipes used to wipe her in a few places. He was trying to destroy DNA.”

  “Really?” Wren furrowed her brow. “This is crazy.”

  “Well, it’s what I found,” said Jennifer.

  “Not you,” said Wren. “Thanks, really. I appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “Of course,” said Jennifer. “If you need anything else, if you have any other questions for me, get in touch.”

  “Absolutely,” said Reilly.

  Jennifer disappeared back into the morgue.

  Wren started walking down the hallway.

  Reilly came after her. “Okay, what? What’s crazy?”

  Wren turned to him. “So, the first day of FBI Academy, you learn that there are two kinds of serial killers—organized and disorganized.”

  “Oh, right, I know this,” said Reilly. “Like Major Hill was an organized killer. He planned stuff out and posed the bodies, and this is disorganized.”

  “Right,” she said. “A disorganized killer kills and runs. He leaves the victim where he killed her, and he doesn’t take any time to present the body. He’s impulsive and sloppy. He usually leaves behind lots of evidence. Sperm, DNA, skin under the victim’s fingernails, you name it. This presents like a disorganized killer, but there’s no evidence, and he’s cleaning up after himself. And the YouTube video, it’s all wrong.”

  “Why is the video wrong?”

  “It’s just not the sort of thing a killer like this would do,” she said.

  “It’s not unheard of for serial killers to use the media to taunt law enforcement,” said Reilly.

  “Right, but that would be something an organized serial killer would do.”

  “Gotcha,” said Reilly.

  Wren rubbed her forehead. “So, basically, what we have here? Either I’m missing something, or this is a serial killer that’s going to revolutionize the textbooks.”

  Reilly considered. “You think it’s possible, what with all the emphasis on evidence like DNA out there in the media today that killers are just smarter than they used to be? Maybe he’s a disorganized killer who cleans up a little.”

  “And wears gloves,” she said. “And uses a gun.”

  “The gun thing is weird?”

  “Well, it’s not unheard of,” she said. “But only about a quarter of serial killers kill with guns. And the gun, it’s an impersonal way of murdering someone. This killer shot her from behind. He didn’t want to look in her eyes while she died, which suggests a certain amount of remorse or trepidation about the act. But then after she’s dead, he molests her body both anally and vaginally. And that’s pretty personal.”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly.

  “So, it’s crazy,” she said.

  “What you’re saying is that you got nothing?” he said.

  “I’m not saying that at all.”

  “You know, the first time I met you, you took one look at a body and you had a profile all worked up in, like, twenty minutes. But not this time, huh?”

  She glared at him. “What? Don’t you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth from the discretionary funds you divert to pay my salary?”

  He chuckled. “Ooh, I must have touched a nerve.”

  She walked faster. “I’d say he’s anywhere from sixteen to thirty years old. I’d guess he never went to college, maybe never graduated high school. I’d say he probably doesn’t have a steady job, he’s possibly got a substance abuse problem. He’s…” She let out a sigh. “Okay, fine. I got nothing.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Wren sat on her porch. It was getting chillier in the evenings as autumn crept up on them, but she still liked to be outside when she could, instead of cooped up inside. She’d spent the day in buildings and cars, going here and there and talking to various people about the body of Bristol Cannon. She wanted to be outside right now.

  She was trying to do some research on the internet on disorganized killers so that she could get a handle on what was going on with this case, but she kept getting distracted by thoughts that would flit through her brain. One was that victims of serial murders became depersonalized to her as she worked on a case. She didn’t mean for it to happen, but it started when she tried to profile the killer. The killer thought of his victims as less than human, and she started to think of them that way too. She had to remind herself that Bristol had parents and a little brother and friends and a boyfriend, and that all those people were devastated right now.

  She had to solve this murder for those people, and for Bristol’s memory. That was what all of this was about.

  Not about this weird disorganized/organized killer who she was finding extremely intriguing. She was frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t get a handle on the guy, but she liked the puzzle. She wanted to solve it.

  Not for the first time, she wondered
if this ability she had to disconnect from everything was hereditary. Had she gotten it from her mother, who had ordered the deaths of more than fifteen people?

  Wren didn’t like to think about Vivian Delacroix if she didn’t have to.

  And, of course, she didn’t know who her biological father was, so she couldn’t be sure if that side of her made things worse or better.

  Sometimes, she wondered if she were a very bad person, deep down.

  She heard a noise, something rustling in the woods near her house and she stood up straight, going to the edge of the porch to peer out into the woods. It wasn’t yet dark outside, but the shadows had grown very long, and dusk wasn’t far off.

  It was probably some animal or something. There were deer out here in the woods. Smaller things too—rabbits, squirrels, even some foxes and sometimes coyotes.

  But it was a person who was coming out of the woods.

  Hawk Marner.

  He strode across her lawn in a flannel shirt, carrying a six pack of beer. He looked up at her, shoulder-length dark hair falling into his light gray eyes. He was an attractive man, even if he was sort of white-trash hot. She wasn’t sure why he was here, exactly. They hadn’t been speaking much lately.

  “Hey, little bird,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I’m bowled over by how happy you are to see me.” He smirked. He reached her porch and climbed up the steps. He set the beer down on the railing and got one out. He offered it to her.

  She hesitated, and then she took it. “I’m not not happy to see you. It’s just… I don’t know… things with us are weird.”

  “They don’t have to be,” he said.

  “I’m still not sure I’m over the fact that you knew that Major was killing those girls and you didn’t say anything.”

  “Major is like a brother to me,” said Hawk. “I couldn’t turn him over to the police.”

  “But you might have been able to save one of the lives of those girls.”

  “Might. Maybe. Probably not.” Hawk took out another beer and popped off the top with his lighter. “I didn’t come here to talk about Major.”