I enter timidly, looking around at the guards. A huge wall surrounds a castle-like estate. It’s freaking huge and I have no reason to be scared but I’m terrified when the buzzer sounds again and the gate clanks shut. I take a few steps and pull open a door to a reception lobby. I’m asked for any weapons or metal objects and told to go through the metal detector, and then I’m patted down thoroughly and told to go ahead. I don’t have to speak to the receptionist because Jenna is waiting for me and tells me to come in to her office.
“Take a seat.” She gestures and I want to refuse and just scream at her to tell me what the hell she was doing with my husband, but my legs are about to give out and I need to sit. “This is unexpected.” She laughs nervously. “Your timing is not the best. Would you like to schedule an appointment? I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have then and-”
I hold my hand up to stop her mid-sentence. “What’s going on with you and my husband?” I have a million questions running through my head but I can’t get any together but that one.
She stands and walks around the table then sits on the corner, grasping her hands into her lap. She’s only an arm’s reach away and if she says anything that I could never imagine happening in our marriage I may never leave this place because I will grab her and rip her black rooted hair from the follicles. “I’m limited in how much I can tell you, but I will tell you I’m his brother, Ryan’s, psychiatrist.”
I wave my hand at her to carry on. “I’m going to need more than that. Why were you meeting for lunch today?”
“To discuss Ryan’s state of mind because of the murder last night.”
What?
“I’m confused. What does Ryan have to do with the murder? He’s confined inside these walls.”
The past months flood through my mind. Blake’s peculiar cold front and unfocused state of mind, and my dreams were all a warning. Did I somehow know the answer all along but was too frightened to voice it or let my mind believe it?
“He’s out, isn’t he?” I breathe and the nausea threatens.
“Mrs. Braxton, let me get you a glass of water.” I dart from the chair and out of the office. Water won’t freaking help me. I push out the doors and claw at the air to feel my lungs. I’m suffocating. Blake hadn’t told me he was out there. Ryan killed my parents and tried to kill both him, and me and he hadn’t told me he was free! How as this allowed to happen? I force my feet to carry me to the gate and instead of being startled by the buzz and the clanking I welcome it. My car feels like it’s parked miles away. I want to get home and lock all the doors and keep everyone I love locked inside until they realize their mistake and put Ryan back where he belongs. I reach my car and press the fob to unlock it and then my worst fear manifests in front of me. Dark black pools of evil pin me to the spot. Dark waves of thick hair frame his face and the cruel smirk makes my insides crawl. I’m mute. I can’t scream but that’s all I want to do, Tears ignite my eyes and my body shakes so forcible my eyesight blurs. “Hey, Mel.” His voice echoes in my mind as darkness coats me and swallows me into its abyss.
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER IT’S a mental state of mind or if you really can just smell death when you first walk in this place, but chills dust your skin no matter how thick-skinned you are. I have killed and seen dead people at all kinds of crime scenes but walking in here still gives me a cold feeling. I knock before entering the autopsy room and when John sees it’s us he waves us over. It takes a special breed of human to be able to do his job.
“Force blunt trauma to the back of the head with a heavy object causing the brain to bleed and fracture, resulting in death.”
“Any other injuries?” I ask and he shakes his head.
“Not that I’ve found but I need to do a more thoroughly detailed report.” He raises a greying brow. I grin my appreciation and he tuts at me.
“He didn’t see the attack coming. He couldn’t prevent or defend himself. The first blow would have dazed him or knocked him unconscious and the blows following came in quick succession.” He points to some injuries towards the back of the neck. “These lower injuries came once the victim was face down. It was a frenzied attack, thirty three injuries.”
“Can you tell us anymore?”
“I can tell you from the in impact of the wounds I would say the killer is likely to be a small man, or maybe a teenager or strong woman.”
Ryan was none of those. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I have the results of Dr. Leighton as well. I have the report for you but while you’re here you may as well come see. Good call on that one, Detective.”
I follow him over the wall of death and he opens a door and slides out another slab. He hands me something to stick in my nose before uncovering the doc. John goes to his feet and spreads the toes, indicating something between them. I drop down to see what he wants me to but there’s discoloring everywhere. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at, so I look up at him and he huffs. “An incision, small, but there,” he says. “Poison administered by a needle between the toes made to look like a natural death. There are traces of the poison in the hair follicles and bones.”
That’s not Ryan’s style. This is premeditated and sophisticated. I turn to Donovan who I’m sure is thinking the same thing I am. “Did we get anywhere with finding his girlfriend?”
“No, but it was filed as a natural death so no one has looked further into it.”
Leighton’s neighbor gave a brief description of the supposed girlfriend of the Doctor but has no known address and the woman hasn’t been in contact with her or us in regards to her dead boyfriend. Mrs. Bellway, his neighbor, says the woman was much younger than the Doctor and wasn’t there often. I’ve called a forensic team to dust for prints after I examine the place; I leave other detectives there to thoroughly go through his belongings while I boot up his computer and download all his files to go over at the office. Donovan and Mills appear in front of me with furrowed brows and cautious stances, making my instincts kick in and every hair on my body stand on end. “What is it?”
“We just got a call, a homicide at Blooming Daisy’s.”
“FUCK!” I shout, launching a bucket of roses across the street. It’s a fucking bloodbath.
“You don’t need to be here, Cap,” one of the officers says to me, but I do. Sean is Mel’s best friend and was a victim of Ryan’s, and now he’s sliced and diced in there. Mel’s going to lose it. This isn’t fair. How many more people has she got to lose? She doesn’t build relationships easily since Ryan, and her only family is Cereus, Sean, and me. Fuck! I boot up Ryan’s GPS which tells me he’s at Bluewater. He wouldn’t have had time to do this, clean up and get there, unless he didn’t clean up, but then Jenna would have called. Jenna. Something was off with her. I need to know more about her.”
JENNA JARVIS DIDN’T EXIST UNtil nine years ago when she changed her name from Danielle Cordell to Jenna Jarvis. Why does that name sound so familiar to me? I run the name Cordell through the criminal database and it comes up with the drug dealer, the one Ryan killed outside Bar Blue. I do a search and all the information filters into the screen. She is the sister of deceased Cordell. She was fifteen at the time of his death and living with grandparents after her parents were killed in a car crash when she was twelve.
“Cap,” Mills says, coming into my office and dropping a box down on the desk, “One of Donovan’s men found this at the Leighton place and I was told to bring these straight over.
Flipping the lid, I’m confronted with images of Jenna, from a young girl up to now, and some are in compromising positions. She was the girlfriend of Leighton? She’s the source of all this. I open up Leighton’s laptop and go through the files but nothing is of interest until I look into his emails and find one sent to a Danielle. I use that email to track her computer and infiltrate it; her passwords are all the date he died. It’s like taking candy from a very fucked up baby. I manage to bring up instant messages sent back and forth between her and a Belinda Ruth. I run her name; she’s a nurse suspended while an investigation is ongoing for the death of a patient under her care. There’s a listing for her last known address.
I bring up the instant messages from yesterday and freeze.
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