The Quiet Bones Page 19

  “Really?” said Wren.

  “That’s what a parent does for her child,” said Reilly.

  “Maybe some parents,” said Wren.

  Pamela had reached the shed. She opened the door.

  And let out a bone-crushing scream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Reilly took off running across the lawn at the sound of the scream.

  Wren went too.

  When they got to the shed, the first thing Wren saw was blood spatter on the back of the door. Then she saw Noah, sitting on the floor of the shed, still holding a gun, slumped there, lifeless.

  Pamela was hysterical. She dove at her son, but Reilly grabbed her and stopped her, holding her arms behind her back. “That’s evidence, Pamela, that’s evidence. If someone did this to your son, you’re going to want to know who.”

  Pamela struggled, shrieking. She turned and began punching Reilly on the chest.

  Reilly let her. He gaped at the remains of Noah, and smoothed the back of Pamela’s hair and made soothing noises in the back of his throat.

  And Wren knelt down to look at Noah’s body, feeling none of that emotion, feeling instead like a curious bird of prey who had stumbled on something very, very interesting. Why was it that dead bodies didn’t affect her properly? What the hell was wrong with her?

  She couldn’t look away.

  Her gaze traveled over the mess of gore that was the back of Noah’s head. A few flies were already alighting on the blood-encrusted exit wound. Wren wasn’t a forensic scientist, but she was pretty sure that the gun had gone off at close range.

  He’d done this to himself.

  She turned back to look at Reilly. Why had he suggested otherwise?

  Pamela crumpled to the ground and Reilly went with her. She was sobbing, over and over, “My baby, my little boy, my baby.”

  Wren had to look away from that, it made her eyes sting and a lump form in her throat. Death… it wasn’t anything. It wasn’t emotion. But the way that it affected people, that was where the emotions happened. She was glad she hadn’t seen Bristol Cannon’s mother find her body or Megan Wallace’s. The naked despair of that—that would have been too much.

  * * *

  Noah appeared on the video in his hooded sweatshirt. His face was visible, but in a harsh shadow. He had filmed the video in his shed, and the only light seemed to be from a dangling lightbulb to the right of him.

  “I thought I was going to get away with it, but the police keep coming around, and I don’t know if I can handle it anymore. I never wanted anyone to die anyway. I took the gun to scare Megan, just to scare her. And she was really scared. She was saying that she was going to call the police on me, and that I was going to go to jail, and I just…” His face hardened. “She was going to ruin my life. She already hurt me so bad, and then when I was trying to make her feel just a fraction of the hell that she put me through, she flipped out and took it way too seriously. I don’t know, I… I pulled the trigger.”

  There was a long pause. Noah looked off beyond the camera, as if he was watching something in the distance. “I said, ‘Don’t you walk away from me.’ But she wasn’t just walking, she was running. And then I pulled the trigger.”

  Another long silence.

  “I wish it had never happened. I never meant it to. I knew there was no way to explain it. No one would understand. No one would know how easy it was. Lights out. She was gone. I mean, it sucked, but she was gone, and I was still alive, and I had to come up with some way to make sure what I did didn’t ruin my life.”

  He laughed then, bitterly. “I didn’t realize it already had. I came up with the idea to make it look like it was a serial killer. All I had to do was kill two other girls. I focused on doing that, thinking that if I just put my plan in motion, I’d feel better. But I didn’t. After I killed Bristol, I felt worse. I felt so bad. I would look at myself in the mirror, and I would see what I was, and I hated myself. I made myself finish it, and I thought once it was finished, then I’d have some peace, but…” His face crumpled.

  His head dipped down, almost out of frame, and he sobbed for a while.

  Finally, he looked back up. “I just made it worse. After Megan left me, I was hollowed out. She hurt me so bad. And then everything I did after that, it just cored out my insides. All I can think is that if she hadn’t done it, then everything would be okay. I’d be happy. She’d be alive.” He wiped his nose.

  He looked defiantly at the camera. “But now, it’s just all bullshit. The police are going to find me, and I’m going to jail for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to live that way. And even if I did get away with it, I’d still hate myself for what I did. I’d never get any freedom from that. So, that’s why I have to do this. To shoot myself. I really don’t have any other option.”

  He blinked.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Mom? I want you to know it’s not your fault. You were a good mom. It’s Megan’s fault. She did this. If you want to blame someone, you blame her, okay? I’m sorry about this, I really am, but it’ll be easier for you and Dad this way. You won’t have to deal with a trial and with me being in jail and having to visit me there and watching me never have a future and all of that. This way, it’s over quick. For all of us. Rip off the Band-Aid instead of suffer, you know?”

  And that was it.

  The video cut off.

  Maliah turned to look at Wren and Reilly. “That’s not the only video like this on the computer.” They were all gathered in her office at headquarters. “There are a few others, some false starts, but he’s basically saying the same gist. Beyond that, there are practice videos for the other ones uploaded to YouTube, where he’s working out how to get the lighting right, ones where he’s trying out different scripts about the murders.”

  “So, he definitely did it,” said Wren. “This was him.” She looked at Reilly. “You were right. How’d you know it was him?”

  “I didn’t know,” said Reilly. “I was only pretty sure.”

  “Because he was the boyfriend?”

  “Because of everything,” said Reilly. “But it’s crazy that he killed himself.”

  “Yeah, serial killers never do that,” said Wren. “They tend to be psychopaths, and psychopaths don’t do guilt well.”

  “I don’t know if he was guilty,” said Maliah. “I mean, he’s a bastard. Talk about blaming the victim.”

  “True,” said Wren. “This guy wasn’t a nice guy to begin with, was he?”

  “You notice how he says that thing to his mother at the end, but he never once says he loves her?”

  “True,” said Reilly.

  “He wasn’t thinking about his mom. He wasn’t thinking about anyone except himself. I think he killed himself because he wasn’t as clever as he thought he was,” said Maliah. “If you guys hadn’t been closing in on him, I don’t think he would have done it. It wasn’t guilt.”

  “It was despair,” said Wren.

  “Maybe that’s the only reason anyone kills themselves,” said Reilly.

  * * *

  “So, I was wrong,” said Hawk. “My theory about trying to convince the girl he was serious about committing suicide, it wasn’t that. He was just a dick.”

  “Basically,” said Wren. She and Hawk were sitting outside at a picnic table, having burgers from the bait and tackle shop. They were really great burgers, but it was starting to get a little too cold to eat outside. She huddled into her leather jacket, wishing she was wearing jeans that didn’t have holes in them.

  “So what’s that mean for you, little bird? This case is over. You found the murderer. What do you do next?”

  “Well, there’ll be more work to do for the next few weeks, maybe even months. We have to wrap everything up and get all the evidence ready to turn over to the district attorney’s office. Plus, there’s still Major’s case.”

  Hawk winced a little, but he didn’t say anything. He just stuffed a french fry in his mouth.

  “So, I me
an, I’ll still be there for a while.”

  “But then?” said Hawk.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Wren. “I mean, I haven’t exactly talked to Reilly about it.”

  “But conceivably, without a serial killer on the loose, your job with Reilly could come to an end.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “Hell, the task force could come to an end. They disbanded it after Oscar Robinson was apprehended.”

  “And if so, where would you go?” said Hawk. “Nothing would be holding you here.”

  She cocked her head at Hawk. “So, that’s what this is about, huh?”

  “You wouldn’t stay here for me, would you?”

  “Hawk…”

  “I don’t think you should, for the record.” He picked up his burger and took a bite.

  She picked up a fry and looked at it. “You’re confusing as hell, you know that? You want me, but then lately, you’ve been trying to chase me away.”

  “Well, I’m confused, little bird,” he said. “On the one hand, I want you around me all the time. On the other hand, I want you to be happy, and I don’t know that I’ll ever make you happy. So, if I’m trying to chase you away—”

  “Why don’t you let me decide if you make me happy or not, huh? Let me make my own decisions.”

  “Right,” he said. “And your decision about whether or not we’re in a relationship?”

  “We’re… complicated,” she said.

  “Yeah, very decisive of you.”

  “I’m not ready to make a decision yet,” she said. “And if you’re not going to decide for us—”

  “How would I do that?”

  “By deciding you don’t want to see me anymore.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Well, then… why can’t we just see where this goes without all the freaking pressure?” She picked up her burger. “Damn it, Hawk, let’s just eat burgers.”

  * * *

  Maliah scampered across the room and dove under the covers, giggling. She held up a pint of ice cream high in the air.

  Reilly, chuckling, snatched it from her. “Well, I have to say this. Your house trumps hotels just because of the supply of ice cream.”

  Maliah laughed. “Well, if you ever get nostalgic for hotel rooms, we can always get one, just to bang.”

  Reilly considered. “Okay. But there won’t be ice cream.” He opened the top of the container and dug a spoon into it. “Open up,” he said to her.

  Obediently, she did, and he spooned the ice cream into her mouth.

  He took a bite himself.

  She took the ice cream away from him. “Assuming this banging thing between us is going to be a regular thing.”

  He grinned at her. “Well, it could be. It seems to me there are now zero obstacles in the way of that.”

  She smiled back, taking a bite of ice cream. “Is that really true?”

  He took the ice cream back. “Please tell me you’re not going to accuse me of sleeping with Delacroix again.”

  She sighed. “Sorry. I guess that wasn’t my finest moment.”

  “Moments,” he said. “Plural.” He licked the spoon. “But who’s counting? If we’re going to do this, let’s just push all that aside and try to start fresh.”

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “Anything’s possible,” he said. He got another spoonful of ice cream. “You want this? Huh?”

  She laughed. “I can feed myself ice cream, Cai.”

  “Wrong answer,” he said, eating the bite himself.

  “You fucking dickwad,” she said, but she was still laughing.

  “Oh, also wrong thing to say,” he said. “I’m thinking that if you want this ice cream back, you had better start apologizing. You have wounded me deeply.”

  She yanked the ice cream away from him.

  “Hey!” he said. “You sure you want to do it that way? I promise you, Maliah, if we get in a tuffle over ice cream, I am going to win.” He winked at her.

  She bit down on her lip, gazing at him. “Kiss me. Now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned forward.

  But his phone started ringing.

  “Let’s ignore that,” he said.

  “No, answer it,” she said, sitting up to look for the phone on the bedside table. “It could be work. If you don’t answer it, it’s going to bother me.”

  “Work? What are you talking about?” he said. “We closed all the cases. There are no murderers running around. It’s all good.” He answered the phone anyway. “Reilly.”

  “Reilly, it’s McNamara.”

  “Jim McNamara? Why are you calling me?”

  “Well, we found another body,” said McNamara. “It kind of, um… it kind of looks like the killer that you already arrested.”

  “What?” said Reilly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Wren stood next to Reilly, gazing down at the body. She wasn’t even sure what to say. “How long has he been here like this?”

  “Probably a couple days,” said Reilly. “We’ll know for sure when we get the coroner to look at the body.”

  “It wasn’t the night that he… captured me, right?” said Wren.

  “I don’t know,” said Reilly. “Probably a little more recent than that. But I’m not an expert in bodies.”

  The victim was Oliver Campbell. He was dressed in black clothes and he was laid out on the ground in the readiness pose, his arm and leg making triangles against his body. His other foot pointed to the east, where the sun was struggling into the sky.

  “It doesn’t fit Major’s profile,” said Wren. “Oliver’s too old, and he’s a man.”

  “But the body is posed just like the girls,” said Reilly. “Unfortunately, we released all that to the press after we caught Major.”

  “Last time Major killed, he didn’t do this. He evolved,” said Wren, remembering the girl sitting by the fire pit, her arms wide, her face covered.

  “We know it’s not Major. He’s in jail,” said Reilly.

  “Right,” said Wren. “This is someone else.”

  “A copycat,” said Reilly.

  “I don’t like copycats,” said Wren. “It’s hard to profile copycats.”

  “Well, he is related to one of the original victims,” said Reilly. “That fits the original profile.”

  “But if this killer is really a copycat, why pick Oliver?” said Wren.

  “No idea.”

  “Well, I guess I’m sticking around for a little while longer,” said Wren. “Now that there’s another killer and everything. Don’t we get a chance to breathe?”

  “Apparently not,” said Reilly. “And, hey, of course you’re sticking around. You wouldn’t leave, would you?”

  “No, I don’t have any plans to leave,” said Wren, kneeling down to look at Oliver’s body. It was funny, because she would have expected she’d have some kind of stronger emotional reaction to seeing his body, after what he’d done to her, and considering what she knew about him. He was her brother. However, it was the same. Oliver was a body. There was no life here, so there was nothing to feel. She found the scene interesting, the puzzle of it, but that was all. “We need to know if there’s any signs of sexual molestation.”

  “Of course,” said Reilly.

  “We need to know if this killer was as careful as Major, if he left behind any evidence.”

  “Definitely,” said Reilly. “First, we need something else.”

  She stood up. “What?”

  “Coffee,” he said.

  * * *

  Thank you for reading!

  There are five books in the Wren Delacroix series. Each will resolve one mystery involving a serial killer but all will deal with bigger threads about the past, the present, the Fellowship of the Children of the Lord Cult, the Crimson Ram, and the characters’ personal lives.

  Click here for information about book three.

  By the way, I love to get reviews. I read each and every one.