Skin Dancer (25 page)

A shaft of clear moonlight struck it. It was crusty with filth, but there was no hair. It wasn't animal skin. A terrible suspicion stopped him in his tracks. Turning on the light, he looked at it. He saw the skin, the layer of fat, the muscle. His stomach heaved, and a scream caught in his throat. He ordered his fingers to release the skin, but they didn't obey. Lurching and panting, he struggled back down the hall into the den still clutching the skin.

“Jeremy!” He stumbled over a chair and went down. “Jeremy!”

His assistant came out of the kitchen, a disgusted look on his face. When he saw Harvey on the floor, the skin in his hand, the color fled his face.

“What the hell? Where'd you get that?” Jeremy rushed to his side, reaching out to help Harvey, then stepping back as he caught the full view and smell of the flesh.

“Someone put it on my bed. Someone put it on my bed.” Harvey repeated the sentence over and over.

“How?” Jeremy looked around the room as if he expected the killer to jump out from behind the drapes.

Harvey took several deep breaths. He had to get a grip on himself. If the killer had been hiding in the bedroom intent on killing him, he'd be dead.

“My doors were open.”

“Betinna always locks them. She never forgets.”

“They were open!” Harvey got to his knees and stood. He stared at his hand until the fingers obeyed and the skin dropped on the dove gray carpet.

“I'm calling the sheriff.” Jeremy started for the phone.

“No!” Harvey took another breath. He'd regained some measure of control, and with it his wits had returned.

“We have to inform the authorities.” Jeremy was insistent. “This is a threat against your life. This involves federal authorities. Now we can call in the FBI or the CIA. We can get agents assigned to protect you. We can—”

“We're not calling anyone.” Harvey walked around the skin. “Get me another drink.”

“A drink? Now?”

“A bourbon. Right this minute. And stop questioning my orders. You work for me, remember?”

“Yes, sir.” Jeremy made the drink and handed it to Harvey. “What are you going to do?”

“I need to make some phone calls. Until then, get some tongs from the kitchen. Seal the skin in a plastic bag and put it in the refrigerator.”

“You're kidding, right?”

Any other time, Harvey would have found the expression on Jeremy's face priceless. “If I have to repeat myself, you're fired.”

“But this is a threat.” Jeremy hurried to get the bag and tongs even as he objected.

Harvey picked up his address book from a drawer in his desk. The skin was more than a threat, it was a promise. 

“Put the skin in the refrigerator, then get on the phone to Dr. Akmar Myss in Montgomery, Alabama.”

“You want me to call a doctor in Montgomery, Alabama now?” Jeremy didn't hide his confusion.

“I don't care how you do it or what strings you pull. He's a neurosurgeon at a private clinic in Montgomery. Get him on the phone and then get out.” Harvey's fingers closed over the portable telephone.

“But—”

“Once he's on the line, you go down to the bunk house and ask the hands if they saw anyone on the property. Tell them to stay away from the house. Now go. I need to make a private call.” Before he heard Jeremy making calls on the land line, Harvey had already picked up his cell phone and dialed Richard Jones's emergency number. He counted ten rings before he hung up.

# # #

 

Rachel headed toward Bisonville as fast as she dared drive. Fumbling on the seat she picked up her cell phone and dialed the S.O.

“What can I do you for?” Gladys asked when she answered.

“Is Scott there?” Rachel asked. If she was correct, the killings had something to do with Frankie and the disappearance of Frankie's father. Gordon had been involved in the investigation when Dub vanished. What was it Frankie had said—horse tracks that disappeared into a trailer. Reported sightings of Dub in Texas. All things that could easily be arranged if a law officer was involved.

“Rachel, did you hear me? I said Scott's at home with his wife and new baby. He left at five.” Gladys was almost yelling.

“Sorry. Is anyone else in the office?”

“Me, myself and I. Voncille never showed up for her shift, so I'm stuck here. Again.” Gladys cleared her throat. “Is something wrong, Rachel? You sound peculiar.”

“I'm not sure.” She felt her own panic growing.

“Where are you?”

“I'm headed back into town. Do I have any messages?”

“Yeah, let me get the pink slips.” The phone clattered to the desk and there was the sound of Gladys pushing her creaking chair back and walking to Rachel's desk. She returned with a rustle of paper. “Frankie called and wanted you to meet her and Jake.” Another shuffle of paper. “And Jake called, said it was urgent. That's it. Oh, yeah, the locksmith left three sets of keys for you. I gave Jake one set like before and put the others in your desk drawer.”

Rachel could feel the hammer of her heart in her chest. “Thanks, Gladys. What time did Frankie call?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Did Frankie say where she was?”

“Nope, but she left a number.”

Rachel memorized the number. She hung up and blinked her dry eyes as she pressed harder on the accelerator. She dialed the number for Frankie as she drove, but there was no answer. The tinny sound of the ring continued as she drove fast through the night.

 

She was a goddess carved from ivory and fire. Richard Jones leaned on his elbow and stared at the sleeping woman in his bed. He was a man who made his living with his brain, and he could tick off the benefits and drawbacks of the relationship he'd fallen into with Justine Morgan, but for the first time in his life, he didn't care about the bottom line or the risk percentage or the profit potential.

Justine had taken him to her bed, or his bed as it turned out, and shown him a taste of her feminine powers. Not that he wasn't experienced with women. A man with his money had no dearth of opportunity. He'd known women who were eager to please his smallest whim, and he'd used them without a thought.

The woman asleep in his bed, auburn hair spread over the pillows like a burst of sunset, was different. He thought about the hours just past and smiled. In the middle of lovemaking, she'd started an argument about the four–lane. Her passion only deepened his desire for her. And though they hadn't agreed on the issue, they'd found orgasm within seconds of each other. The sexual stimulation, coupled with the intellectual, was almost more than Richard could bear. It worked on him like a drug, and he was tempted to wake her up so they could debate and make love again.

He heard his cell phone ringing, his private number that only a few people knew. He considered answering it, but instead he let his hand drift to Justine's slender waist. His fingers glided over the smoothness of her hip. She was exquisite. Lying on her side, her breasts gently sloping and her face soft and tender with sleep, he knew he was falling in love. It was the most extraordinary sensation, like dropping out of an airplane without any means to stop himself.

The tone from his cell phone continued. Fearing that it might awaken Justine and she would decide to go home for the night, he slipped out of bed to answer it. Before he picked it up, another noise stopped him.

Someone was downstairs.

He heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs and then in the hallway outside his bedroom.

Such a thing wasn't possible. He had a high–tech alarm system that was infallible. The only way to get in a door or window without setting off the alarm was with a specific code.

Yet he was certain he heard footsteps.

The cell phone had stopped ringing, and he moved to the door. His heart hammered. Mullet Bellows had been working with the alarm company when he'd had the system installed in his home. He'd never considered that Mullet might have access to his codes—or that Mullet could've been tempted to sell that information to someone.

That was all he could think about now.

Alongside the sound of his heart beat and the thrum of his blood, he heard something else. At first he wasn't certain what it was, but as the noise drew closer to the door, he recognized it.

The soft sigh of a bone rattle whispered under the door. Richard froze. He searched his memory for the connection, and with it came real fear. He knew the legend of the Skin Dancer. Since Hank and Mullet's murders, he'd tried not to connect the dots that tied his past to the two dead men. With the nervous rattle of the bones outside his door, he could no longer ignore it. The past had come calling.

Hank and Mullet, both skinned and decapitated in a ritualistic fashion, had been useful in the past for setting up hunting expeditions for potential investors in Paradise. Harvey had always handled the details, since Harvey still enjoyed the kill. Richard had given up hunting long ago. After the Dub Jackson incident, he'd had no stomach for killing anything.

He hadn't really been involved in what happened to Dub. He hadn't. He'd been there, but he'd never been part of it.

Harvey had been laying the groundwork for his first U.S. Senate race, but his eye had been on the potential of Paradise. He'd arranged a “hunting trip” for several of the most lucrative backers. The men who'd flown into Criss County for a big game kill were influential in D.C. circles, known to make things happen. Harvey was a man with vision, even then. He'd seen the way his ambitions and Richard's infant plans for Paradise would dovetail into the perfect partnership. So Harvey had asked Richard along on the illegal hunt.

Richard had never cared much for hunting, and he'd been sickened when he saw the gray wolf in the leg trap. The plan was for Mullet to release the wounded animal only minutes before the hunters, who were waiting at a cabin, arrived at the scene. With only three working legs and half–starved, the animal would be an easy kill.

Hank had been baiting the wounded animal, teasing it by shooting his .22 caliber pistol near its legs, until it lunged and snapped at the end of the trap chain, when Dub Jackson had ridden over the ridge, alone. He'd ridden straight into the group of men, pulled his revolver and shot the wolf.

When he turned to Harvey, he'd said, “I'll end your political aspirations over this, Dilson. You won't be serving the public–you're going to serve time in a federal prison. No one has the right to treat an animal that way.”

Leaning against the cool door of his bedroom, Richard saw it all again. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into the wood, but he couldn't stop the memories.

Harvey had tried to reason with Dub. Mullet and Hank had flanked Harvey like the thugs they were.

“I'm rounding up my cows, and when I get home, I'm going to call the game warden,” Dub said. Richard could still see the disgust in his clear blue eyes as he surveyed all the men.

“It won't do any good,” Harvey had responded. “The game warden isn't interested in this hunt.”

“Then I'll take it to the newspaper. Lots of ranchers don't want the wolves back in these hills, but this kind of crap,” he'd pointed at the leg trap, “is inexcusable.”

He'd turned his horse to ride away when Harvey grabbed the pistol from Hank's hip. “Don't make me hurt you,” Harvey had said.

Dub had kept riding. He'd never even turned around. Harvey shot him in the back of the head.

No one had anticipated the girl, riding up from the opposite direction. No one had noticed, tucked as she was behind a rock outcropping. Once she screamed, there was no doubt she'd seen Harvey shoot her father.

Richard put his hands over his ears, trying to block the memories. The bone rattle chattered in his head, and he heard the echo of Frankie's sharp scream, then the sound of another shot, and finally the deep silence of the wilderness that fell over all of them.

Mullet had gone to check on the girl and come back saying she was beyond help. She'd been shot in the head. So they'd left her. It was just a miracle that she hadn't remembered any of it.

“Richard?” Justine's gentle voice touched him like a warm hand. “What's wrong?”

“Do you hear it?” he asked.

“Hear what?”

“The rattle. It's—” But the sound was gone. If it had ever been there at all.

“What's wrong?” Justine asked again as she grabbed the sheet from the bed, wrapped her naked body and came to him. She rubbed his back and pulled him into her arms. “Don't tell me you have nightmares?” she asked, a teasing note in her voice.

“It must have been a dream. I thought I heard someone in the house.”

“Not in this fortress. I don't think James Bond could infiltrate your security system.”

He let her lead him back to the bed. “I heard something.”

“I'll get you some water.”

The sheet had fallen from her body, and he was mesmerized by her perfection yet again. “Okay.”

She wrapped the sheet toga style and walked across the room barefoot. At the door she turned slightly to give him a smile.

The door blasted open with such force that the edge of it caught Justine in the face. He heard her nose crunch, and bright red blood poured down her face and chest and onto the sheet.

“Uh–uh–uh.” She made a strange guttural sound as she fell to the floor.

Richard had no time to think. A person dressed all in black kicked him in the face and he fell backward onto the bed. Before he could even react, something hard slammed into the side of his head. He fought for consciousness and was aware that he was being dragged on the bedspread through the bedroom and down the hall.

At the top of the stairs, he felt a boot in his back and he began to fall, bumping on each step, turning and thudding until the blackness swallowed him.