Skin Heat (12 page)

They obviously needed plain white for trim and to redo the cabinets. Now that she had his approval, she was already planning to redo the whole downstairs. A soft cream would suit the parlor; it wasn’t a big room, so it needed the pale walls to open it up. She’d never been in the downstairs bedroom.

“Just the kitchen and front room,” Zeke said. “Not the bedroom.”

He didn’t want to change it? Odd. But she didn’t press. It was his house.

“Do you have any ideas for the bathroom?”

It was too small for a three-bedroom home and it seemed to be the only one. But from what she remembered, the tiles were sound, and he’d obviously given them a good scrubbing because the grout was clean.

He shrugged. “What goes with green and white?”

She hesitated a little. Should she really be redecorating his house for him? It seemed presumptuous. And yet if he minded, surely he’d say something?

“I’d paint the room white and then put up an ivy border to bring it together.”

He also needed a new shower curtain and some new bath accessories, but she wouldn’t find them here. Plus, she suspected she shouldn’t buy such things. Paint was one thing, less personal somehow.

His eyes gave away his uncertainty. “Let’s do it.”

Moving on, Neva showed him some options and he liked Bavarian cream for the parlor. They went with a low-maintenance, low-odor paint that promised to resist stains and clean up easily. She guessed at how much paint would be needed for each room, but based on a quick conversation with the salesman about the dimensions, which Zeke confirmed, they worked it out.

The total came to several hundred dollars, once they added plastic and rollers to the cost of the paint, but it was going to be so worth it. She gave the clerk her credit card without so much as a flinch. She couldn’t get enough of shows like
Trading Spaces
,
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
, and
While You Were Out
. Living first at Harper Court, then in dorms, and now in an apartment she didn’t own, she’d never been given a chance to do anything like this. God, she wanted to please him. She didn’t know why it mattered so much—only that it did.

Once they’d finished, they headed out to the car. She started it, fairly bubbling with anticipation. “This is going to be so much fun.”

“It is?” He sounded dubious.

“Absolutely. You’ve given us a great start with all the cleaning you did. The walls are ready. Since they’re all white”—which was a kind word for the dingy hue—“we should have no problems getting the color to cover in one coat.”

“Seems like you know a lot about this.”

Heat rose in her cheeks as she drove toward the farm. “Mostly from TV. But I promise I know what I’m doing. I helped Julie and Travis paint their place.”

He seemed to register her dismay. “Not worried about that. Was just wondering why you wanna do this on your day off. It’s work.”

“I like work. It keeps me from thinking.”

“Ah,” he said, and she had the unmistakable impression he understood.

Worthless.
His father’s
voice rang in his head.

He could almost feel the dark closing in on him. A tremor rocked him as if he’d been struck. He listened to the old man’s tirade patiently and then he went to get the plastic. But first, he stripped her naked. Not for lascivious reasons, but in case trace evidence lingered on her clothing.

The slashes he’d made sent a shock down his spine. They weren’t clean and pretty; he could see where his hand shook and they marred her pale skin in crooked gashes. Finished at last, he wrapped the woman’s body so she wouldn’t leave any signs in his vehicle, and then wrapped her in another layer of plastic to be safe. The woods would provide a safe dumping ground. Out here, he had no neighbors to see what he was doing.

He swung the body into his arms and carried her outside. This time, she did go in the trunk, but he wouldn’t be driving on traveled roads. Instead he went along the dirt track until it just . . . ended. From there, he took her on foot. No need for a grave. He had been studying the art of death for years, and it seemed to him that the Green River Killer had been very good at disposing of bodies without being caught. That had always surprised him, given that Ridgway had an IQ of eighty-two. How then was he able to elude capture for twenty years? He’d learned a great deal from the man; sometimes raw animal cunning beat pure intellect.

Fortunately he had his share of both.

Next time, he would try something different. To be worthy, to put his father to rest and get his voice out of his head forever, her death had to be perfect. And it would be. There was no shortage of brunette, brown-eyed women in the world.

He’d get it right next time.

And then Daddy would say, at last,
Good work, Son. I’m so proud. You finally made them pay for what they done.
Then he could move on. The old man would be exorcised, and he could finally live his life on his own terms.

He found the place beneath a stately pine. Elm and hickory didn’t offer the same carpet, which made him feel he was laying her to rest in a worthy place. With great care, he unrolled her from the plastic and used a gloved hand to brush her hair from her face. It still wasn’t right, somehow, and then he remembered the red satin ribbons. Dreamily, he twined them about her arms, lacing them like a dancer’s shoes. She would be elegant eternally, hiding the ugly wounds he had inflicted.

Inexplicably a fragment of a poem he’d read in school came to him.

He wished he could remember the rest or at least the author’s name so he could look it up. But clearly it was true. In this moment she belonged to him, and she was innocent in death. So he scooped up two handfuls of dry leaves and covered her genitals.

There. That was better.

As he went back toward the car, he realized he wasn’t afraid anymore. Instead a sense of peace and completion suffused him. His father’s voice was, mercifully, silent. He had the sense the old man approved. Perhaps this hadn’t been the right way for Geneva Harper to die, but it was a step in the right direction. The old man approved of persistence and commitment to quality.

For his next girl, he had something special in mind.

It did not take long for him to get back to the house. He gathered the girl’s effects, including her purse and her clothing, and dumped them into a rusty barrel. Next went the plastic. He doused it all in lighter fluid and set it alight. Nobody would think twice about somebody burning trash out here. People did it all the time.

For long moments, he stood and watched the acrid smoke curl skyward. Then he pulled the car keys out of his pocket. He needed to check on his mother.

 

“
How long do
you think she’s been out here?” the deputy asked Hebert.

He shrugged. “Too many factors to say for sure.”

Animals had been at her; part of her face had been eaten away by insects and she bore bite marks on her extremities. It was made more grotesque because of the rest-in-peace arrangement of her limbs, offered in vivid contrast to the slashes. He was looking at those, too. They wouldn’t have bled enough to kill her. At this point, it was impossible to say what had.

“Somebody has a lot of rage toward women,” the deputy said.

“Like that couldn’t be said of most men who kill women. He’s probably also between twenty-five and forty-five, Caucasian, and hates his mother.”

The deputy laughed. “You should be a profiler.”

Funny. Except it left them with too many suspects and too much territory to cover.

Hunters had stumbled across the girl, chasing a deer. They’d stopped and called it in, thanks to cell phones, and now here he was, dealing with it on his first day off the desk. The locals didn’t have the resources to deal with a naked unknown murder victim, so they’d called the ABI. It was his job to figure it out.

The tech crew had just arrived. His stomach hurt, but it was hard to know if it was residual damage, phantom pain, or nerves. Without Rina at his back, he’d lost some confidence in himself. Or maybe the stabbing had done that. Whatever the reason, he wasn’t the man—or the agent—he had been, but maybe he’d get back there. In time.

He focused on the scene. She was obviously posed, arms crossed on her chest. Then there were the red ribbons, twined around her arms and legs. They’d suffered some from exposure to the elements, but the inclusion tugged at him. What did it mean? There was always a reason for whatever weird fucking thing these people did, and if he could work it out, it would tell him something about the killer.

Hebert studied a little longer. Maybe a dancer had gone missing. That seemed like a too obvious solution, but he couldn’t afford to overlook any angles. So why here? What was special about this spot? It had an access road nearby. He’d already walked it; there would be no traffic here. Nobody to see what someone carried in his arms. So privacy, for sure. Had the killer known who owned the land and wanted to make trouble for him?

He went over to the hunters, who were all middle-aged and clad in flannel. Two wore glowing orange vests. One of them, Gerald Franklin, owned the land. Hebert needed to talk to him in particular.

“Emil Hebert.” He offered a hand to be polite, and they shook all around. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to know more than they’d told the county boys. None of his questions revealed additional information, but their stories had enough variance that he didn’t suspect them of covering something up. One guy remembered seeing a rabbit just before they found the girl, and another argued it had been a squirrel. He suppressed the urge to tell them it mattered fuck-all if they’d seen the ghost of Bambi’s mother out there. Only the dead girl signified anything. Since they didn’t know who she was, he cut them loose, except for Franklin.

“Do you live on this property?” he asked.

“Nah. I’m from Birmingham. There’s a cabin out here, but I don’t stay in it often. Mostly when I’ve pissed off the wife.”

“But you make regular hunting trips.”

Franklin nodded. “But only in season. We have all the licenses.”

“You didn’t recognize the victim?”

“Not at all. Poor girl.” His face was pale, and his hands still weren’t steady.

Hebert understood. Even if you hunted, it wasn’t the same dealing with a human body. “Do you rent your property to other hunters?”

“No, it’s just for my friends and me.”

So limited traffic and an absentee landowner. He wondered if the killer had known that. If he did, it suggested someone local with knowledge of the area. “Do you have any enemies, anyone who would want to make trouble for you?”

“Like
this
?” Franklin asked, wide-eyed. “Hell no. Look, I sell used cars. I’ve pissed a few people off in my day, and I don’t give refunds, but I can’t imagine . . . no. No way.”

The guy seemed sincere, but one never knew just how far some people would go to get even. Normal ones didn’t kill women just because they’d bought a lemon. The more direct route would be beating the shit out of Franklin.

“Do you have any game cameras out here?”

“Actually, I do. Want me to show you?”

“Please.”

As it turned out, he had three of them. They checked the first two and found nothing but animals, but the third was more or less in the path between the access road and the tree where she’d been found. Hebert checked this one, while Franklin stood by. A shiver went through him. The killer had brushed right past it. Unfortunately, it hadn’t caught his face. But it gave him some idea of the man’s build. He was tall and lanky; he’d carried the woman, wrapped in plastic, like a bride. The plastic hadn’t been found with her, which meant he’d taken it with him.

“Damn,” Franklin said, peering over his shoulder. “I guess you need the chip, right? Do you have to take the whole camera as evidence?”

“No, the chip’s fine. Thank you for your time, Mr. Franklin.”

“I can go then?” The man looked eager to get out of these woods. Daylight was fading, and he couldn’t have any fond memories of today’s business.

“Of course.” Hebert strode back to the scene, where the tech crew was finishing up. “Did they turn up anything?”

The deputy on scene shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

He fought his instinctive impatience. Overall, despite their inexperience, they’d handled things as well as could be expected. It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t have the resources, and half the time, Hebert didn’t, either.
Fucking budget cuts.
They always made it look so easy on TV.

“Good idea.”

This wasn’t the primary scene. No blood. No trace evidence. Someone had just quietly brought her out and dumped her. But no, that wasn’t right, either. The killer had taken care with her. That much had been evident by the way he’d held her in the footage. He’d had some pride in his work, judging by where he’d placed her. In the winter, the pine resin didn’t drop, so he’d wanted her protected by the evergreen. Did that imply a relationship with the victim?

But they wouldn’t be able to rake her past with a fine-tooth comb until they knew who she was. Running her prints and dental records would take weeks, but he was grateful the killer hadn’t pulled her teeth or cut off her fingertips. Of course, that would signal the job as pro-work, someone experienced in preventing anyone from identifying the deceased, not just a gifted amateur.

Since he’d arrived last, everyone else was just waiting for him to give the word, so they could pack it in. No weapon, no vic ID, nothing helpful at all. This wasn’t the way he wanted to get back in the game. But there was no arguing the circumstances. He cued them to wrap things up and move out.