Wren Delacroix Series Box Set Page 39

  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.

  AN ECSTASY OF BONES

  An Ecstasy of Bones

  Wren Delacroix, Book Three

  V. J. Chambers

  AN ECSTASY OF BONES

  © copyright 2019 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

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  CHAPTER ONE

  Wren Delacroix stepped across the threshold of the Daily Bean, the coffee shop in Cardinal Falls where she began each day. She had noted that Detective Caius Reilly’s car was in the parking lot, which meant that he was likely to have bought her a coffee already, and she wondered what it would be.

  Wren didn’t like repeats when it came to coffee. She liked new flavors, new combinations, exciting things. So, typically, Reilly would buy her whatever the barista Angela James recommended. Angela liked Wren, because she considered her the coffee shop’s own private taste tester, so Angela could try anything she wanted out on Wren, and Wren would try it.

  Actually, today, Angela was probably hoping to get some feedback on the toasted coconut mocha she’d made for Wren yesterday.

  Reilly was at the counter, ordering drinks. Maliah Wright was next to him. She was craning her neck up to look all around the interior of the Daily Bean. She’d never been here before, Wren guessed.

  Maliah worked with Wren and Reilly at the tri-state task force. She was the computer specialist, handling anything that involved the internet or technology. She and Reilly were also having an affair, one that they both seemed to deny that they were having. But now, look at them here, together, getting coffee.

  Where the hell was Maliah’s husband?

  Because Maliah was still married. Reilly had been married, too, when they’d started hooking up, but now he was divorced, and the fact that the two of them kept up this relationship…

  Well, Wren probably shouldn’t judge, what with the fact that she was in some kind of complicated sex-buddy thing with the guy she’d had a crush on when she was a teenager. Whatever it was that was going on with Hawk, she couldn’t bring herself to call it a relationship, even though she knew that he wanted more from her than what he was getting.

  Wren had come through the door briskly, a woman on a mission, but now she stopped dead and looked at Reilly and Maliah.

  Maliah noticed her. “Oh, Delacroix,” she said. She turned and touched Reilly. “Cai, she’s here, you don’t have to order her anything.”

  Reilly turned from the counter to Wren. “Hey, Wren.” He grinned at her widely.

  Wren sucked in a breath, plastering a big smile on her face. She made her way over to Maliah and then looked down at the other woman’s hand. She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Hmm.

  “Hey, Wren,” said Angela brightly. “What you do you think about a bananas foster cafe au lait today?”

  “Sounds great,” said Wren, who was still looking at Maliah’s naked finger on her left hand.

  Maliah made a noise in the back of her throat.

  Wren, who realized she hadn’t greeted her, whipped her gaze up to meet Maliah’s. “Good morning,” she said, too brightly.

  Maliah pursed her lips.

  Wren lifted her chin.

  Reilly cleared his throat. “Uh, how’d you sleep?”

  “Great,” said Wren. She arched an eyebrow. “You?”

  Reilly scratched the back of his neck, looking away. He laughed to himself. “Yeah, that was a dumb question.”

  “So, you guys are out in public together and everything,” said Wren.

  “I’m separated,” snapped Maliah.

  “Oh,” said Wren, and it was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her head. “Well, then… great. That’s great for, um, you two.”

  “Thanks,” said Reilly, slinging an arm around Maliah. “See you at the office.”

  “Yeah,” said Wren, giving him a little salute. She watched as they walked out of the coffee shop with their coffees.

  The door closed behind them.

  Angela poured milk into a cup and stirred. “So, what did you think of the mocha from yesterday?”

  “It was amazing,” said Wren quietly.

  “You didn’t think it was too heavy on the coconut?”

  Wren shook her head. “No. It was perfect. Really perfect.”

  Angela dumped brewed coffee in with the milk. “You’re
probably distracted with this case. I hear that there’s already a new killer in Cardinal Falls.”

  “Yeah,” muttered Wren. Everything to do with that was crazy.

  “It’s like we’re cursed, I swear,” said Angela. She topped the drink off with whipped cream and sprinkles of shaved chocolate. Then she set it on the counter.

  “That looks delicious,” said Wren.

  “Hope you like it.”

  “What do I owe you?”

  “Six even.”

  Wren dug money out of her pocket and put it on the counter. Then she picked up her drink. She tasted it and shut her eyes. Ah, the heaven of caffeine in the morning. Perfect.

  * * *

  When Wren got to headquarters, Reilly wasn’t in his office.

  She figured he was in Maliah’s office, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go in there. They wouldn’t be, like, making out at work, right? That would be totally unprofessional. She couldn’t picture Reilly doing something like that. He was pretty much a stickler for rules.

  Or was he?

  He’d lied for her when she’d shot Kyler Morris, after all. And there was the fact that she worked here at all. He had hired her using discretionary funds allocated to him for consulting experts. She wasn’t even an expert, not really. She hadn’t finished at the FBI Academy. She’d dropped out.

  She wanted to talk to him, but maybe she’d just wait until he was done with Maliah, with whatever they were doing. Just to be safe.

  But then she heard Reilly’s laughter coming from Maliah’s office, and she noticed the door was open.

  She decided to risk it. She went down the hallway and stopped outside Maliah’s door.

  Reilly was leaning against the wall, drinking his coffee. Maliah was sitting on her desk chair, her legs crossed toward him. They were both laughing.

  Wren felt awkwardly as though she should start laughing too, but she didn’t know why they were laughing. She couldn’t do that. She just stood there.

  Reilly noticed her. “Oh, hey, Wren, what’s up?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “You know how that last case we had, it turned out that Noah Adams wasn’t really a serial killer, he was just trying to hide the fact that he’d killed his girlfriend?”

  “Yeah?” said Reilly.

  “Well, it occurs to me that this thing with Oliver Campbell, it’s only one body. Even though he was posed just like the victims of Major Hill, that doesn’t mean that this is part of a serial case.”

  Reilly considered this. “You know, you’re right.”

  “I am?” said Wren.

  Reilly nodded. “I mean, we still got our hands full tying up the Noah Adams case. This is only one body right now. It’s not really our jurisdiction.”

  * * *

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Chief Andrew Thomas. He was standing behind his desk at the Cardinal Falls Police Station. He was wearing a suit and tie, but his tie had a strange yellow stain on the end of it. Maybe mustard. “You think my department has the resources to work this case? Hell, the entire reason the task force was created was because we couldn’t do it fifteen years ago.”

  “Well, this isn’t a serial case,” said Reilly.

  “Like hell it’s not,” said Thomas. “The body was posed like all those other bodies.”

  “Yeah,” said Wren, “but they were all female and between the ages of nine and thirteen. This is a grown man. It doesn’t fit the profile.”

  “Not to mention,” said Reilly, “we already locked the killer up.”

  “So, it’s someone completely different,” said Wren.

  “Well, maybe,” said Thomas.

  “Maybe?” said Reilly.

  “There’s a possibility you locked up the wrong guy,” said Thomas. He eyed Wren. “I was surprised you put away one of your own anyway.”

  “One of my own?” said Wren. “What are you talking about?”

  “You members of the Fellowship, you stick together is all,” said Thomas.

  “I’m not a member of the Fellowship,” said Wren.

  “Well,” said Thomas, “close enough.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant,” said Reilly. “Why don’t you put someone from your office on it, see what they can dig up?”

  “And when another body drops, then we turn all our information over to you so that you can take credit for our hard work?” said Thomas. “I don’t think so. This is a task force case, and you need to put tax dollars to good use and start working it yourselves.”

  “Maybe someone had a grudge against Oliver,” said Wren. “Maybe someone wanted revenge against him. After all, he had a penchant for violence.”

  “What?” said Thomas. “Why would you say that?”

  Wren pressed her lips together. The truth was that Oliver Campbell was her half brother. He’d told her that when he’d captured her and stuck her down in an old well for safekeeping. He was going to forcibly extract her bone marrow so that Wren could donate it to his sister, who was dying of leukemia. But she had decided not to press charges against her brother after she got free. She had decided that she would let it go, since she was free.

  And then Oliver had turned up dead.

  Heck, maybe she should come clean with Thomas. If she did, maybe she could beg off working the case since she was related to the victim.

  Of course, that probably wouldn’t fly here in Cardinal Falls, which was a small community and where lots of people were related. That would make things too hard for the department to enforce if no one ever worked a case with someone they were related to. It wasn’t feasible.

  Besides, she didn’t have sisterly emotions for Oliver. She mostly hated him for capturing her.

  Given time, she might have come around to pressing charges. Right after it happened, however, she’d been too busy trying to recover to want to go through another ordeal. She still had bruises from where she’d jumped out of a moving car trying to get away from Oliver.

  “No reason,” Wren muttered.

  Reilly eyed her.

  She looked away.

  “You’re not going to take the case?” said Reilly.

  “It’s not our case,” said Thomas. “It’s yours.”

  “Well, if we take it, our priority is going to be tying up loose ends on the last case we wrapped, not this investigation, not yet.”

  “That’s bullshit,” said Thomas.

  “You can’t give up one guy to go ask around and see if Oliver Campbell had any enemies?” said Reilly.

  “He did,” said Thomas. “Those crazies up at the compound. They killed his daddy, didn’t they? And now, look how they laid out his body. They killed him too.”

  Wren folded her arms over her chest. “You know, this is exactly why I don’t trust this department to do anything right. This kind of ineptitude and prejudice. It was never the Fellowship that killed anyone, it was only—”

  “Your mama?” said Thomas.

  Wren drew in a breath, trying to steady herself. She didn’t feel steady.

  Reilly put a hand on her shoulder. “What my associate is trying to say—”

  “What I’m trying to say is that we wouldn’t let you touch this case if you were the last police department on earth,” said Wren in an icy voice. “Of course we’ll work it. That’s the only way justice is ever going to be done.”

  And then she peeled Reilly’s hand off her shoulder and stalked out of Thomas’s office, slamming the door behind her on her way out.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Wren got out to Reilly’s car, it was locked, so she stood there like an idiot next to the passenger side, fuming, angry at herself for losing her cool, angry that she’d somehow managed to volunteer to take another case that might not even be a serial killer—

  But no.

  There was another reason why she didn’t want to work this case, and the reason was swimming around in her subconscious, and she refused to look at it, to face it down. She couldn’t let that thought surface. She simp
ly could not.

  Reilly appeared several minutes later, twirling his car keys on his forefinger.

  “Unlock the fucking door already,” she snarled.

  He raised his eyebrows and used the key to unlock her side first. He didn’t have a key fob with a clicker because he’d lost it, so he had to unlock the car manually.

  She hurled herself into the car and busied herself with the seatbelt.

  Reilly got in next to her.

  She slammed the seatbelt into place.

  Reilly put the keys in the ignition.

  She looked at him.

  He sat back in his seat, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Oh, come on, we both know we were going to end up working this case, anyway. We want to work this case, don’t we? If we don’t, then what’s going to happen to the task force? They could disband us, right? We need cases to, you know, exist.”

  He turned the key in the ignition and backed up the car.

  They pulled out of the parking lot and drove in silence for several moments.

  Wren started talking again. “How hard could it be, anyway? You did great with the case once you knew that Noah Adams wasn’t a serial killer. So, this will be the same thing. We’ll make a list of people who had a grudge against Oliver.”

  “Well, it occurs to me that you might top that list at the moment,” said Reilly.

  “Me?” Her voice was shrill. “I thought we left this idea that I was guilty behind already. You’re not seriously accusing me, are you?”

  He glanced at her. “Not you, no. But we had another suspect for Major’s murders. You said he was our best suspect more than once, and—”

  “Stop,” said Wren. “Stop it, now.”

  “Wren, I distinctly remember you saying that you didn’t want to press charges against Oliver, and him being all, ‘He needs to face consequences.’ I don’t know his exact words, but it was something like that.”