Should Be Dead (The Valkyrie Smith Mystery Series Book 1) (4 page)

Val’s heart hammered in her chest. Tears filled her eyes. “You told me!” she shouted. “You told me to go!”

“Not to let me die!” His bonds fell away, and Tom rose from the chair. He took a step toward her, strips of flesh dangling from his wounds, the slit across his throat like a mouth grinning back at her. Val backed away.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop him…”

“Mom?” said a voice at the top of the stairs.

Val’s heart wrenched. She tried not to look, but couldn’t keep her gaze from straying to the dark silhouette of her teenage son at the top of the stairwell. Kyle took a step towards her, and then another. “Where did you go, mom?” he said. “Why didn’t you protect me?”

Tom closed in on her right. Valkyrie backed away. Outside, the storm raged, the blood forming into streams that ran across the lawn and down the road. Valkyrie screamed.

Val bolted upright in bed. The sheets were damp with sweat and her heart thundered in her ears. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was four a.m. Val knew she would not get any more sleep that night.

Chapter 6

Loki was not a happy camper.

He should have been, all things considered, but somehow he still wasn’t
satisfied
. It was like going through the drive-thru only to realize ten minutes later and ten miles away that he’d been given the wrong food. The entire experience had left him feeling hollow, unfulfilled.

The killing was fun, that was true, but something was missing. Something he had been expecting to find in the shallow breath and glazing eyes of his victims as they died. That feeling, that thrill hadn’t lived up to his expectations. He needed more
.

The problem was that Loki couldn’t
enjoy
murdering the Brooks family. Odin had been looking over his shoulder the whole time, counseling him, judging him like a freaking Olympic skater or something. No one could enjoy his work under those circumstances. Not even a serial killer. Odin was the problem…

Loki glanced at the older, more experienced killer. Odin was reclining on the couch at the front of the motor home with his feet propped up, a bag of chips resting on his gut, a beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He was clicking through the channels quietly, repetitively, as if nothing in the entire universe could hold his attention for more than ten seconds.

Odin was as pale as Loki, but looked even more unhealthy. There was something wrong with his skin color. Maybe a disease, Loki thought, like hepatitis or something. Maybe the man was just plain sick.

Loki sat in the dinette, leaning back in the corner with his arms crossed in a way that made his baggy leather jacket bunch up around his shoulders, closing in around him like a cloak. Loki’s eyes had dark circles, and his thin, scraggly goatee looked like it had been drawn on his face with a pencil. Odin clicked the remote a few more times.

“Just pick something,” Loki said impatiently.

Odin pulled a corn chip out of the bag and crunched it loudly, giving no outward sign that he’d even heard the request. He flicked the channel again. Loki fought the urge to take a steak knife out of the kitchen drawer and shove it into Odin’s swollen gut fifty-seven times.

Loki knew better than that. Odin was much bigger than he was. They were of an equal height, but Loki was thin. He had always wanted to be big and strong like Odin, but Loki had neither the temperament nor the genetics. He’d joined a gym once, three years earlier, and it had ended badly. Loki had gone in at two a.m. hoping to enjoy a nice private workout, but he hadn’t been alone. There had been three guys there, big muscular dudes with tattoos. They kept looking at him, talking in low tones amongst themselves, whispering, laughing. He hadn’t been able to hear what was said. He only saw the glances and sneers, and heard their mocking laughter, and he
knew
they were laughing at him.

Needless to say, Loki had ended the workout prematurely. He showered, changed into his street clothes, and then waited for the three of them in his van out in the parking lot. Just as he’d expected, an hour later they all came out in a group, like a gaggle of women on their way to the ladies’ room. Loki revved up the engine and slammed the van into drive. Before they even realized what was going on he ran one of them over, and struck another with the corner of the fender, breaking the man’s hip. Only one of the weightlifters got away unscathed. He fled around the corner and went running down the sidewalk. Loki didn’t stick around to finish them off. He was impetuous, but he wasn’t dumb. He floored it and got out of there. He spent the next few weeks laying low in the redwoods up north.

Odin rattled the corn chip bag as he struggled to get the last bits out of the bottom. Frustrated and mocked by the leftovers he couldn’t quite reach, Odin turned the bag upside down to dump the last few crumbs into his mouth. He threw the empty bag on the floor, and made smacking sounds as he flicked the channel a few more times.

“Choose a channel,” Loki grumbled. “Choose a channel, choose a channel,
choose a channel
! Would you PLEASE just choose a freaking channel!” The last sentence ended in a scream that would have terrified anyone else, but Odin simply took a deep breath, inflating his enormous belly, and rolled his eyes in the direction of his partner.

“Chill out.”

Loki let out a roar as he fought his way out of the narrow booth. He kicked and twisted, shaking the table violently as he finally escaped. He stood upright, shaking himself to get his jacket straightened out. Odin looked him up and down. For a moment, it seemed like they were engaged in some sort of psychic battle. Then Loki spun around and took a step towards the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Odin said, his lips drawing thin under his silver beard stubble.

 “Going for a walk,” Loki grumbled.

“Don’t go far.”

“I can’t,” he said with a curl of his upper lip. “You made me dump my van, remember?”

“Relax, I already told you, you can crash in my motor home.”

Right, so you can keep an eye on me,
Loki thought.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to Loki that Odin had a plan for him, and it wasn’t just teaching him to be a better killer. It didn’t matter. Pretty soon, Loki was going to kill him anyway. He shoved his way through the trash around the front door, and disappeared into the night.

Chapter 7

“That’s it?” said Jackie Sharp, Riley’s assistant editor and forever-unrequited love. She leaned over his shoulder, scanning the article he’d just finished on his computer screen. Her breath was hot and sweet on the back of Riley’s neck, like cinnamon, and he felt her breast graze his shoulder. Nervous little jolts of electricity danced across his skin.

Focus,
he told himself.

“I tried to stick with the facts. I thought the article did the job well enough. Do you think it needs something else?”

“Riley, this is as dry as the governor’s autobiography. Three people were murdered and you have nothing to say about it? What happened to them? What went on in that house for an entire weekend? And who did it?”

“I don’t know who did it yet, and the sheriff asked me not to reveal too many details.”

Jackie let out an exaggerated sigh as she collapsed into the chair across from him. She flicked her auburn bangs out of her eyes -deep, dark blue eyes that held his gaze fast and made his heart flutter like a schoolboy’s- and shook her head.

“Riley, when will you learn the sheriff can’t tell you what to print? This is a free country.
A free press
. Your job is to get the dirt, not to make the sheriff look good.”

“I know that. I just happen to agree with him this time. I don’t want to frighten people just out of sensationalism.”

“That’s very noble of you, but I’ve got a news flash. Readers
want
sensationalism. They want you to grab their attention, to fill their heads with images they can’t let go. That’s how you sell papers. Give them a story they can’t get forget about for a week. Make it
haunt
them.”

“Too late,” said a voice behind them. “You’ve already been scooped.” Riley and Jackie looked up to see Carlos standing in the doorway, holding up a copy of the Press Democrat. He tossed it onto the desk, and Riley picked it up. He scanned the front-page headline:

“Family slaughtered: Serial killer on the loose!”

Riley groaned. “I talked to Kim personally. She promised not to run this story.”

“She played you like a fiddle,” said Jackie. “And guess whose story everyone will be talking about this afternoon?”

Riley leaned forward on his elbows. He put his head in his hands. “I’m an idiot,” he said in a muffled voice. “I deserve to go out of business.”

Jackie and Carlos exchanged a glance. Jackie put a comforting hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You’re not going out of business, Riley. We’re not going to let that happen.”

He raised his head, and fixed his gaze on those beautiful eyes. “Do you have a rich grandmother?”

Jackie laughed. “No, but I have a plan. You’re going to make Kim Carson wish she’d never even heard of the Herald.”

“Oh? And how will I do that?”

Jackie smiled confidently, a smile that almost made Riley believe he really could do something worth remembering. If only Jackie knew how he felt about her. If only she cared about him the way…

“You’re going to solve this murder,” she said, slamming her hand down on the desk. “You’re going to find out who the killer is, and run the story before the Democrat even knows what hit them! They’ll look like amateurs sitting around on their thumbs.”

Riley’s hand instinctively went to his pocket, searching for the roll of antacid tablets he carried everywhere he went. The very thought of chasing down a serial killer made the acid churn up in his stomach.

“You’ll have to start with the sheriff,” Jackie continued. “He trusts you, so it won’t be hard to find out if he has any leads. Then, you’ll go back to the crime scene…”

He chewed a tablet, swallowed it down, and popped another in his mouth. Jackie rattled on, detailing her plan like the unlikely plot to some Agatha Christie novel. Her voice became a droning sound, and the movement of her plump ruby red lips filled his vision. Riley nodded patiently, pretending to be hanging onto her every word, pretending he didn’t feel like the room was spinning. He swallowed the second tablet and considered going for a third.

“Doesn’t that make sense?” Jackie said.

“Sure,” he said, smiling. “Of course it does.”

An hour later, Riley found himself driving up the narrow gravel road towards the Brooks home. It was a cool, sunny day, and he had the window rolled down. The smell of damp moss and rich earth filled the Prius as he entered the Armstrong Redwood Forest.

Riley had called Diekmann that morning, but the sheriff hadn’t been much help, nor had the coroner. Despite the violence of the murders, their team hadn’t found a single fingerprint left by the killer. They were still waiting for results on blood and DNA tests, but didn’t expect much from those, either. It was unlikely that the killer’s DNA had been registered unless he was an ex-convict, so even if they got a sample, they wouldn’t have a match until they had him in custody.

Which left Riley wondering exactly what he planned to accomplish with this little mission of his. Jackie’s plan had sounded good back at the office. All he had to do was search the crime scene and find some clue that the police had overlooked. That clue would lead him straight to the killer, and an exclusive story that would put his little newspaper back on the map. Piece of cake.

Riley had a whole different feeling as the redwoods closed in, choking the sunlight into black shadows, and the damp, musty earth swallowed up the sound of his hybrid so that all he could hear was the crunch of rocks and branches under the tires. Somehow, Jackie’s plan seemed unlikely now. No, more than that, it seemed downright stupid.

As the road swerved around the twenty-foot trunk of a giant sequoia and the Brooks’ home came into view, Riley saw Valkyrie’s sleek black Packard parked out front. His heart skipped a beat. His foot faltered on the accelerator, and he halfway made up his mind to turn around.
Killers always return to the crime scene,
he thought. Then it occurred to him that the killer would not likely return in broad daylight, and certainly not the day after the crime.

Val came out of the cottage just as Riley parked. She stood leaning on her cane, watching him intently. Riley searched his memory for her name and he saw the image of a female warrior in his mind, a Norse Valkyrie wearing shining armor and brandishing a sword.
Valkyrie
, he thought. Valkyrie Smith. An unusual name. That made his word association game easier. He might have imagined her as a crow, with her black suit, dark eyes, and proud demeanor, but not with that name. A Valkyrie was a Norse goddess, a warrior… an angel almost, but painted black. A fallen angel.

This was one of Riley’s little memory tricks. It was a reporter’s job to meet thousands of people over the course of his career, and the only way to remember all those names was by word association. Associating the name with an image somehow made it easier.

“Good morning, Agent Smith,” he said, stepping out of his Toyota. Next to the Packard, it looked like a little silver toy.

“I was hoping I might see you today,” Val said. She reached out to shake his hand. Her skin was soft, her fingers long and thin, like her body. She stood half a foot taller than him, which Riley found more than a little intimidating. Her height and confidence, coupled with the image of a Norse goddess in the back of his mind, made Riley’s palms start to sweat.

“You wanted to see me?” he said. “About what?”

Val cast her gaze around the clearing, constantly aware of her environment. “I had to leave in a hurry last night. I had an important call to make to my supervisor. I thought you might fill me in on the details of what happened after I left.”