Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1) (15 page)

The very thought of Valkyrie Smith made Jackie want to hit something. Her reaction was so visceral, so violent that it took her by surprise. Jackie had never been the fighting type. She’d been a cheerleader once upon a time, and before that a girl scout, but she’d never been seriously athletic and she was not the type to react physically. What had happened to her? What had made her hate this woman so much?

She’s ruining Riley,
Jackie thought.
She’s corrupting him, turning him into something he wasn’t meant to be…

And yet, thinking of Riley that afternoon, with his untucked shirt and disheveled hair -thinking of the way he’d put her in her place, even threatened to fire her!- brought a fluttering feeling to her stomach; a feeling that just didn’t make any sense. It was Riley she was thinking about.
Riley!
How could he possibly have this effect on her?

When Riley had threatened to fire Jackie, she been so flustered that she had stomped out of the office and walked halfway across Healdsburg without even realizing where she was going. By the time she came to her senses, he was gone. Not that it mattered. What could she possibly have said to him? She couldn’t apologize. Not to Riley. She couldn’t lower herself beneath him like that.

Yet here she was, pacing her apartment like a lovesick teen. What could be lower than that? And why? Sure, Jackie
cared
about Riley. He was a good guy. A nice guy. But he just wasn’t interesting. Not in that way. Or was he?

Pathetic!
she thought.
I am pathetic.

How had it come to this?

It’s that Valkyrie!
she thought.

Jackie slammed her fist down on the kitchen table. The table jumped, and both beer bottles fell over. Sudsy brown ale came bubbling out across the tabletop. The empty bottle bounced over the edge and crashed to the floor, shattering, sending shards of broken glass skittering across the linoleum. Jackie cursed under her breath. She turned away from the mess and reached for her cell phone. She dialed information.

“I’d like the number for the nearest FBI office,” she said. “Yes, please go ahead and connect me.”

A wry smile came to her lips as Jackie heard the phone ringing at the other end of the line. “We’ll see about you, Valkyrie Smith,” she whispered to the empty room.

Chapter 20

Loki didn’t have any particular destination in mind when he abandoned Odin at the ranch house: he just wanted
out
. He couldn’t take it anymore. Loki was done with his so-called partner. He was done with the older man looking over his shoulder, telling him what to do and how to act. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. That wasn’t the agreement.

When the two of them had first met online, Loki had been suspicious that Odin was a cop pretending to be a serial killer. Odin had shared similar suspicions, and it took a few weeks of exchanging emails and information before they began to trust one another. During that time, Loki had learned a great deal about Odin. In fact, he had come to admire the older man and to see him as a sort of mentor. Odin liked that.

Odin had offered to teach Loki, to make him a better killer. At the time, Loki had delusions of gathering his victims together into a big warehouse, or perhaps an isolated cabin up in the mountains somewhere, and making them into slaves. Odin had completely different ideas. Unfortunately, Loki didn’t understand the difference until they met face to face. It wasn’t long before Loki began second-guessing his decision, but by then, it was too late…

As he started the Mercedes and drove down the lane, a movie was rolling through the back of Loki’s mind. It was a fantasy about streetlights, dark alleys, and anonymous women with high heels and red lips. Loki was the predator, the hunter, the stalker in the darkness who took them for his own, and used them however he wished. It was nothing personal. Loki didn’t have any vendetta or message; nothing so high-minded, like Odin and his godly lessons about wisdom and immortality. Loki simply enjoyed
hurting
things. Especially women, because of the way they had treated him in life.

Loki had sexual fantasies about women, but it wasn’t the actual act of sex that aroused him. It was about domination, about fear and pain. Loki had realized this after he killed his first victim. He had raped and tortured her, just as she’d deserved, but those were cheap thrills compared to what came later. When the woman at last realized that no one was going to save her, that she was going to die alone horribly, this was the moment when Loki discovered his purpose in life. When he saw the life go out of her eyes, even while her heart still beat inside her chest, he
knew
. It wasn’t about raping or killing. It was about
destroying.

This had been a pinnacle for Loki. It was a moment he had yet to match, especially because Odin had been there ever since. It just wasn’t the same with him. Odin wanted things just so. He wanted to create a scene, a piece of art that would astound and horrify. To Loki, this kind of thinking was ridiculous.

Loki turned left at the end of the lane and headed down Highway 1, south towards Bodega Bay. It was the closest thing to a real town anywhere nearby, if one could even call it that. It was more like a tiny tourist trap with a harbor full of fishing boats and a few scattered art galleries and restaurants. And one gas station. Hardly a blip on the map, really. Still, it had potential.

Loki had never been there, but he’d heard stories about the town while growing up in nearby Lake County. He’d heard about the wine and art festivals, the clam chowder cook-offs and the angler’s fairs. It had always sounded like a fun place. A place full of interesting things and beautiful women. As a child, it had sounded wonderful.

Naturally, Loki’s father had wanted nothing to do with it. Shelby was more interested in raising chickens and beating his son than going somewhere and having fun. He was cruel and abusive. That was something Loki’s mother had figured out years earlier. She’d left home when little Michael Barnes was just four. She had simply walked out one day while his father was at work, and they never heard from her again.

When Shelby came home and found his four-year-old son building a block house with peanut butter and mayo on the living room carpet, he was furious. Normally, Loki’s mother would have taken the brunt of the beating, but in her absence, Shelby took it out on his son.

Shelby blamed the child for the mother’s actions, and had never forgiven Michael. Naturally, little Michael took this to heart. The impressionable young boy believed he had driven his mother away. He believed that he deserved the cruel treatment his father had given him.

Over the years, Michael figured out the truth, but by then the damage was already done. And he wasn’t Michael anymore anyway. He was Loki now. He was fine with that. It was fun having a secret identity, like a super-villain from the movies. If Loki had a bat-cave, he knew exactly what he’d do with it…

Loki followed the bright lights and the smell of food to the
High Tides
restaurant at the south end of town. It was a nice restaurant with a large parking lot and a boardwalk along the water, leading up to a nearby hotel. It was the perfect place to stalk another victim.

Loki parked in the back corner, in the shadows under a cluster of sequoias. From there, he walked along the southern end of the lot to the edge of the boardwalk. It was quiet and dark there, far enough from the noise and bright lights of the restaurant that he could observe his prey for hours without attracting any attention. Loki leaned up against the railing, looking out over the bay towards the marina on Bodega Head. He saw a few scattered lights among the boats there, but the place was mostly dark. To the west, towards the mouth of the bay, he saw a string of red and green harbor lights attached to piers thrusting up out of the water. In the distance, a small Coast Guard boat on patrol headed out into open waters. It vanished into the fog.

The smell of food wafted over him, but Loki ignored it. Food had never appealed to him. Loki ate occasionally, when he could feel his body weakening, but he regarded the process as a crude necessity from which he derived no pleasure whatsoever. He hungered for something else. It had taken him a long time to figure out what that thing was. Now that he knew, he felt like he would die without it.

As the fog crept across the bay and began to close in around him, Loki risked moving closer to the restaurant. Customers came and went. One middle-aged couple walked right by him on their way to the hotel, and didn’t even notice Loki staring at them. They were too starry-eyed with love, their senses dulled by full bellies and heads full of wine. They were ready-made victims; prey waiting for the right predator.

Loki wasn’t interested. He crept closer to the windows, still leaning against the handrail as he watched the customers inside the restaurant. A bald waiter brought balloons to a couple with two young children in high chairs. The customers at the table next to him tried in vain to get his attention. The waiter completely ignored them as he headed back to the kitchen.

An elderly couple sat a few yards away, up against the windows facing the bay. They focused intently on their food, neither one looking up to say anything or even acknowledge the other’s presence. Loki watched them for a while, wondering why they were so unhappy. The couple seemed well off. The man wore a gold Rolex and the woman wore several diamond rings, and a rather large diamond-studded medallion on her necklace.

Loki knew the jewels were real because their clothes were expensive, too. The old couple had money, but not much of anything else. He wondered why they were even there together; why they were still pretending to have something that they had obviously lost years ago. Perhaps they just feared being alone even more than they hated being with each other.

Another table: a group of young men with red faces and big appetites, possibly surfers or fishing buddies who had been out on the bay all day. A row of people at the bar, drinking their sorrows away, or celebrating their happiness into a hangover. Something caught his eye. A waitress in her early twenties with platinum blonde hair and a curvaceous build that even her apron couldn’t conceal.

Now that,
he thought,
looks tasty!

She brought another round of drinks to the young men, and Loki watched them stare at her as she set the drinks on the table. She bent forward, offering the boys a generous glimpse of her cleavage that none of them could resist. She was working them for a good tip, Loki decided. Smart girl, using what she had to her advantage.

The fact that all of those other men wanted her made Loki want her even more. As she left the table and headed back to the kitchen, Loki circled around the building, hoping to catch another glimpse of her. At the back of the restaurant, the kitchen was closed off from view, but he could see the wait staff area. She stopped there to adjust her customers’ bills. Loki moved in closer as he watched her. She tallied up the drinks and used the calculator on the cash register to total the bill. She placed it in her apron pocket and then turned, smiling, as the other waiter came up to her. They spoke for a minute. He said something funny to her, and she threw her head back and laughed.

So innocent… so pure,
Loki thought. Her skin was clear and pale, like moonlight shining down through the clouds. Her young body so firm, her breasts round and perky, the way they only are in a girl of that age…

Loki was so focused on the girl that before he knew it, he was pressed right up to the window. As the waiter disappeared into the kitchen, the girl turned to face him. Her eyes widened as she saw the face leering at her out of the darkness, and she screamed.

The waiter returned, touching her shoulders, asking her what was the matter. She pointed, but Loki was gone; vanished like a wraith into the darkness and the fog. He moved to the edge of the parking lot and the sheltering concealment of shadows and scrub brush there, to wait for the end of her shift, and so much more.

Chapter 21

Valkyrie spent an enjoyable evening with Diekmann at his lady-friend’s place in Alexander Valley, ten miles north of Vine Hill. The sixty-eight year old sheriff was dating a seventy-year-old woman named Annette Shepherd. Apparently, she was the grandmother of a private investigator who lived in the area.

“Have you told Joe?” were the first words out of her mouth when Diekmann began describing the case they were working. The sheriff said that he hadn’t, and gently explained that finding serial killers was a job best left to professionals like Valkyrie. Val could only smile and nod, and try to swallow back her guilt along with a gulp of chardonnay.

After some small talk, Annette went to work in the kitchen. She baked a large salmon for dinner. Val tried to help her out, but the elder woman wouldn’t hear of it. “I may be getting old,” she said, “but I won’t give up my kitchen until you pry it from my cold, dead hands. You just sit down and finish your glass of wine. Tell us all about the work you do.”

Val complied, at least as far as the wine went. She wasn’t eager to start making up stories about working as an FBI agent, so she skirted that subject as much as she could. Eventually, they moved on to more pleasant things: stories about Annette’s life in the valley and her many years of running the vineyard on her own after her husband’s death.

Val couldn’t help but see a little of herself in the older woman. Annette was strong and independent. She didn’t mind working in the vineyard or fixing things around the property when it had to be done, but she was happiest cooking a meal for the people she loved. That was very much how Val had been, once upon a time, before Odin took that all away from her.

It was a pleasant dinner and Val enjoyed getting to know Diekmann a little better, but that guilt kept gnawing at her the entire time. She couldn’t get over the fact that while he was inviting her into his life, she was lying to him in return. That sense of guilt kept her on edge for most of the evening. After dinner, Val left early, using the excuse that she had a long drive back to the hotel.