A Deeper Grave

The boxes contained important things from her old life that she couldn’t bear to part with. Her son’s favorite blanket. Her husband’s beloved vintage Foo Fighters T-shirt. Photo albums and videos. The locket that had belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother before her. The folded flag from her father’s funeral.

Bobbie Sue Gentry was thirty-two years old and those few boxes, about two feet by two feet each, represented the best of her life to date. Her old life. She couldn’t live that life anymore, couldn’t be that woman. Most people didn’t understand. Sometimes she thought Bauer might, but maybe not. Those boxes were all that remained of her early history, her marriage and her family.

She turned away from the door and continued on to her bedroom. Her old life was dead and buried. Her penance for survival was to carry on. Why not devote her life to being the best cop she could be? Perhaps one day it would include something more than her job, but not now. The idea that she could even conceive such a notion was relatively new and still a little hard to swallow.

She was a work in progress.

Bobbie removed her backup piece and the ankle holster and placed both on the bedside table. The knife she kept strapped to her left shin landed there next. She’d stopped carrying a stun gun tucked into her bra. The one she’d owned had ended up in evidence and she’d never bothered to claim it or to buy another. She didn’t need it now. She toed off her sneakers and peeled off her sweat-dampened clothes.

With a pair of clean panties and her backup piece in hand she padded across the cold wood floors toward the bathroom. D-Boy followed. She flipped on the bathroom light and he took his position outside the door. She smiled. He was a good guard dog.

She went inside, closing and locking the door behind her. With her .22 on the closed toilet lid, she turned on the shower and waited for the warm water to make its way from the water heater at the other end of the house. Her face was flush from the three-mile run. She’d gained a little weight the past couple of months. Not a bad thing, according to the doc when she’d had her required department physical last week. With her forefinger she traced the thin, barely there line that looped around her neck. The nylon hangman’s noose she’d worn for three weeks had left a gruesome scar. She’d had plastic surgery to remove it in hopes of preventing the inevitable stares and questions from everyone she met.

As steam started to fill the air, her fingers trailed down her chest, tracking the scars. So many scars. Her palm flattened on her belly. Below her waist her right thigh and calf were riddled with ugly marks from him and from the surgery to repair the damage he’d wielded. Bauer teased her about being the bionic woman with all the hardware in her leg. She angled her head and peered at the reflection in the narrow full-length mirror behind her.

She read the words tattooed on her back, the meaning curdling in her gut.

Over and over she cursed herself for the path she chose to take.

The pain a reminder of those devastated for her sake.

The Storyteller had tattooed those lines on her flesh. Her story. She could have had them removed but she needed to look at them every day. She never wanted to forget. Just thinking about the psychopath who had tortured and raped her for better than three damned weeks made the bones in her right leg ache. The Storyteller had left a trail of bodies, including her husband’s, across the southern United States over the past thirteen years. He was the reason her little boy was dead. The bastard might never have been caught except that having a victim survive to identify him had marred his record and he hadn’t been able to resist coming back to correct that anomaly. Bobbie had been that victim and she’d been waiting for his sorry ass to return. Images from those final moments in that dilapidated shack in the woods flashed one after the other through her head.

She’d made sure he got what he deserved.

Her choices were the reason she would never hold her baby again. She would never make love with her husband again. Her old partner would never call her “girlie” again. She stared at the long scars on the backs of her wrists. At first she had wanted to die, too.

She exhaled a heavy breath, only then realizing how thick and damp the air in the room had grown. No looking back.

She climbed into the shower and let the hot water sluice over her weary muscles. Tomorrow and the day after and the day after that she would do all in her power to be the best cop possible.

The image of Nick Shade edged into her thoughts. Her hands stilled on her skin, body wash slipping away. She wondered where he was. If Weller wasn’t playing some sadistic game, Nick was in danger.

Tomorrow she would try to reach him.

She hurried through the rest of her shower and quickly dried off. On second thought, why wait until tomorrow? Why not call him now? If the number he’d used previously was still in service, they could talk tonight. Now.

Wrapping the towel around her body, she grabbed the .22 and left the steamy bathroom, headed for her bedroom. D-Boy trotted after her. Her cell was already vibrating loudly in the quiet room. She reached the bedside table and grabbed it up. Devine’s name flashed on the screen. She couldn’t pull the charging cord loose and hold on to her towel, so she bent forward to answer, pinning the towel with her forearm. She placed the .22 next to the knife once more.

“What’s up?” Her pulse thumped a little harder with anticipation. There could be a break in the case or another murder. Anticipation fired through her. Maybe Fern Parker had been found.

“I didn’t wake you, did I? Damn. I just realized how late it is.”

“No, no. I was in the shower.” Bobbie dropped onto the side of the bed. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve spent the past six hours going back through what we have. I’ve called every name on Fern’s contact list again and then called every person suggested by anyone on that list. For the last two hours I’ve focused on the parents. Despite all that work I’m left with nothing more than a couple of new names. I want to go over them with you. Do you mind? My mind is racing with possibilities on this damned case. I don’t think I’m going to sleep again until it’s over.”

“Sure.” Bobbie pushed the wet hair back from her face. She was always ready to talk about the case. This was the first homicide she and Devine had caught as partners. “Let’s hear ’em.”

“Wait, how did your appointment go?”

Bobbie cringed. She’d told her partner she had a doctor’s appointment. “Good,” she lied. “I have to wait for some of the test results, but I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“Nothing like having the doc give you a clean bill of health.”

Thankfully he moved on to the names he wanted to discuss. Bobbie felt guilty for lying to her partner but sometimes it was necessary. As soon as she and Devine had finished she would call Nick.

She owed him more than she could possibly hope to repay.

Four (#u022ee035-69f9-5715-ab13-603421c4398f)

New Orleans

11:30 p.m.

Nick Shade waited in the darkness for another full minute. The shotgun house he’d been watching for the past two weeks was dark. The woman who called the place home was always in before dawn. Like a vampire, she didn’t make public appearances during daylight hours.

He had been tracking the Executive Executioner for two months. Finding her had been a little trickier than he’d estimated. The Big Easy was the forty-year-old former schoolteacher’s preferred hunting ground. She’d left victims all the way from Houston to Tallahassee, but New Orleans apparently held some significance for her. It wasn’t her hometown though. Adele Pratt was from Jackson, Mississippi. She had been a daddy’s girl all the way up to the day he’d dropped dead in his office. Her father had been a low-level ad man at a major firm where he worked ridiculously long hours in an attempt to keep the boss happy. Adele had been murdering ruthless businessmen like her dead daddy’s boss for nearly a decade.

Nick reached above his head and stretched his back. He’d been waiting and watching for hours, day in and day out. It was almost time. His prey was on the verge of taking her next victim.

Adele Pratt didn’t know it yet but she was finished.

For the first thirty years of her life she’d never shown the slightest reported penchant for violence, and then one of her students shot herself right in front of Adele. Something happened to her in that moment when a fifteen-year-old decided she couldn’t deal with her demanding and ironically high-level executive father for a moment longer. Adele’s family hadn’t heard from her since that day. They all thought she’d gone off somewhere and taken her life. But that wasn’t the case. Nick had found poor, sweet, reserved Adele. She had been busy giving all those demanding men like her father’s old boss and her former student’s father what she believed they deserved—a truly nasty death after hours of slow torture.

She had lured in her latest prey and, if she followed her usual MO, tomorrow night she would make the kill. Oil tycoon Race Cashion had no idea what a lucky man he was. Adele, aka Alana Jones the Executive Executioner, was about to retire permanently.

The day’s thick humidity had eased a little with the darkness, but the air was still far too suffocating for Nick’s liking. Halloween was approaching and the city had spent the entire month celebrating death in all its grim beauty. Nick stood and stretched again. The rocking chair he’d vacated eased back and forth once, then twice. The elderly man who lived in the house Nick used for a vantage point was sleeping off his nightly drunk. He generally started around five and by ten or so he was down for the count. Nick had to give him credit, he had good taste. The bourbon he inhaled night after night was some of the best the average man could buy and likely exhausted the biggest portion of his retirement check. Each night Nick tucked ten bucks into the coffee can over the stove. The old guy had cut a hole in the lid and used the can like a piggy bank where he kept his change. By the last week of the month the mound of quarters, nickels and dimes was probably all he had left. This month when he removed that lid he was going to have a nice surprise. It was the least Nick could do for the use of his back porch.

He picked up his backpack and slipped across the narrow yard, using the overgrown shrubbery for cover. There were a few preparations he needed to make before Adele returned home. He approached her back door, listening for any sounds of trouble. Picking the ancient lock was too easy. People who renovated historic homes should never rely on the security of a century-old lock. He silenced the alarm and then reset the system with the code she’d written on a sticky note and stuck to the wall above the keypad. It wasn’t that Adele was too dumb or flighty to recognize the recklessness of leaving the code in plain sight. Not at all. The woman was highly intelligent. She simply wasn’t afraid.

Maybe she really wanted someone to come in and end her misery.

The house was quiet. Adele didn’t own any pets and she never had company. No friends, not even her targets were allowed in her home. Nick had searched the place thoroughly and discovered the photographs and trophies from her kills. During that thorough search he’d memorized the layout of the interior, which allowed him to move about inside now without the aid of light. The back door entered into a small laundry room, which led into a long narrow hall. Beyond the two doors in that hall, one leading into a bathroom and the other to the master bedroom that had once been two bedrooms, was the remaining space that served as the kitchen, dining, and family room. If the lady of the house followed her usual routine, she would arrive home shortly and take a bath. After a long soak in the tub she would go to bed.

Adele lived lavishly. Fine clothes and jewelry and a top of the line Lexus. The men she murdered supported her in high style and they had no idea they were paying their own murderer. Nick removed his backpack and started to unzip it when the purr of her luxury sedan broke the silence.

She was early. He shouldered his backpack and took a position in the elaborate bathroom. Down the hall the key turned in the lock with a concise click. As soon as the door swung inward the alarm began its urgent warning. She entered the code, silencing the system.

Her soft laughter filled the air. “You are too wicked,” she teased.

Nick stilled. Was she speaking on her cell phone?

“You bring out the devil in me.” The male voice was deep and slurred.

Nick swore silently. He recognized the voice—Race Cashion. Had she moved up her timeline? Why deviate from her MO and bring the man she intended to murder here? Maybe she had a little something extra planned for Cashion. Nick mentally ran a couple of adjustment scenarios and decided on an alternate plan of action of his own.

More playful back and forth echoed through the house. Cashion was obviously inebriated. Adele’s actions didn’t make sense. She never murdered a victim in her home. Like a fox she hunted and slept alone with the two being mutually exclusive. Maybe tonight was about a last-minute opportunity to milk this kill for more money—retirement money perhaps. Whatever the case, Nick’s task had just grown considerably more complicated.