Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 361(@200wpm)___ 289(@250wpm)___ 241(@300wpm)
I frowned.
“Where’s the woman who lives here?” I asked.
Loki looked at me.
“Woman?”
I nodded. “The woman. A man—the one that was, you know, chopped up?”
He nodded.
“He wouldn’t have a house like this. Not with that truck. It’s a work truck. A woman has to live here. Her car’s probably inside the garage.” I gestured to the garage on the side of the house.
Frowning, Loki walked around the back side of the house where the detached garage was located.
“Our records show that only a man lives here,” he said as he walked. “Only mail that comes here is addressed to the man.”
I shrugged. “A man like that doesn’t have this kind of house, with those kind of flowerbeds, without either being gay or having a woman around. They just don’t care.”
Loki opened his mouth to say something but stopped when we came to the garage door and looked inside. There was, indeed, a car in the garage. A cute one with a metal angel hanging from the rearview mirror. There was also a red sticker on the rear window of the car declaring her a ‘whino.’
“Fuck,” Loki said, turning around and walking back toward the front of the house.
Again, I followed him.
“There’s a woman here somewhere,” Loki called as he rounded the corner. “Find her.”
“No woman, boss,” came the rookie’s reply. “We’ve canvassed the house. The garage only has a car in it. Assumed it was the man’s.”
“Not the man’s.” Loki shook his head. “It was a woman’s.”
Then he went on to explain what he’d found. “So either she’s missing and was taken from here, or she’s here. Either way, we need to know who she was. Ayers, after you and your team canvas that garage, let me know so I can get the VIN number.”
Ayers looked like he’d rather go home, something he was in the process of doing when Loki discovered the car in the garage. But at Loki’s request, he came back and started to pick through his bag.
“You’ve got a good eye.”
I looked over at Loki.
“What?”
“An eye for detail. You’ve got one. I saw the landscaped yard but assumed it was the man that liked it nice. You’re right, though. I like my yard to look nice, but I damn sure wouldn’t be planting pink and purple flowers or putting all those gnomes and shit on my front porch,” he expounded.
I grinned. “Janie tells me that I have an ‘intellectual mind for detail.’”
He nodded. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
***
What we ended up finding wasn’t the woman. We found a lot of blood, and a whole trash bag full of her shit shoved into not one, not two, but three of the neighbors’ trashcans. It was almost as if the killer had tried to erase the fact that she was ever there. He couldn’t take it all with him, so instead he discarded it off the premises in an attempt to hide her presence.
The only question was…why?
It was everyone’s hope that since this was the freshest crime scene, the murder only happening a few hours prior, that this new clue would shine some light on what else we’d been missing.
Unfortunately, there was no way to compare it with the other murders since their trash had already been picked up and there were no other signs that women had been living with those victims. But, all of the houses were a lot like this victim’s house. Almost as if they had a woman’s touch but without a woman actually living there.
Meaning that the killer was clearly adept at hiding this shit, but something must have spooked him or caused him to slip up at his last victim’s house.
Chapter 3
Some people become doctors and lawyers. I just spent six minutes trying to figure out how to open a box of macaroni.
-Kayla to Janie
Kayla
I was deep in my head, replaying the images of the man who’d been chopped to bits and then reassembled like a freakin’ jigsaw puzzle when Janie’s angry voice filled my head.
“I’ve literally done everything I can think of,” Janie dropped down into the recliner like a stone hitting water.
The chair rocked back and hit the wall, and Rafe walked into the room to see what had just happened.
“Don’t worry,” I said teasingly. “She didn’t just deliver your child and let it drop to the floor.”
Rafe flipped me off and left, leaving Janie and I alone again. The two dogs at Janie’s side got up and decided to follow him. My guess was in an attempt to get away from Janie’s incessant whining.
“You’re like a day and a half past your due date. You’ve literally got like twelve more days before you’ll be induced? Seriously, get the fuck over it.”
Janie threw the remote at me, and it hit my book.
I flipped her off, then went back to my book.