Wine would definitely figure in her plans.
As she pulled out of the parking spot, it occurred to her that Nadine must know the car she drove.
Amy wasn’t sure how, unless the woman had been following her.
And if she knew the car she drove, then what else did she know about her?
4
The bodies lay side by side on tables in the morgue: both grey in pallor with dark rings around the eyes and wearing the waxy smooth complexion of death.
The body on the right had been cleaned up, but still carried ugly gash marks from the repeated stabbing, while the body on the left was untouched, but had suffered a possibly more horrific death.
They hadn’t been in time to save her and Rebecca dreaded to think what the girl’s last moments had been like, buried alive beneath six feet of earth and left to suffocate. Her hands were bloody and her nails torn where she had tried to claw her way out of the coffin. There had been no escape and, according to Greg Withers, she could have remained alive in that little box, the skeletal remains of Maria Carpenter underneath her, for anything up to two hours.
They were still waiting for an ID on the pair, but both Rebecca and Jake believed they were likely to be a couple, not strangers, as the picture in the locket worn around the girl’s neck closely resembled the face of the man lying next to her.
The man who had buried her alive.
Abrasions on his hands suggested he had been the one to have dug up the grave.
What kind of sadistic son of a bitch were they dealing with? Someone who had forced a man to bury his girlfriend alive and then brutally stabbed him to death.
Was it someone known to the couple? Maybe a jealous ex or an enemy they had wronged; or had they been victims of circumstance?
Boaz had been able to give little information. That he had gone to the church straight after leaving the bar to set up for service didn’t ring true to Rebecca. Boaz was a lazy cop who liked an easy life. He wasn’t the type to lose sleep if hymn books weren’t laid out properly.
Then again, you didn’t expect to find out he was a regular churchgoer, did you, Rebecca?
She still would never have believed it had the pastor’s wife not confirmed it.
Regardless of Boaz’s laziness and his family history, he was not a killer. Rebecca and Vic had been partnered for two years and she liked to think she knew him pretty well. When the revelations about Rodney Boone came out, he had taken it hard. Maybe that was why he had turned to the church.
The vibration of her cell shook her from her thoughts. She pulled the phone from her pocket and scowled when she saw Alan’s name appear on the screen.
Jerk!
Diverting the call to voicemail, she slipped the phone back, not missing the look Jake shot her.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied, grinning.
He had discarded his jacket; the shirt underneath was crumpled, sleeves rolled up, and he was in need of a good shower. They both were, having literally been shovelling soil from the grave.
Jake needed to concentrate on his own love life instead of taking such a keen interest in hers. Since he’d broken up with Lara, he tended to keep his romantic liaisons short and sweet. Rebecca knew the break-up had been messy for him. He and Lara had been childhood sweethearts and had moved to Oregon together, but things hadn’t been right between them for a long while. Jake was a cop and worked long hours. Lara found it hard, alone in a strange city, and had strayed. She’d begged forgiveness, but Jake was big on trust and wanted out; he’d ended up walking away with just the clothes on his back and his dog.
He’d fought Lara over Roxy. She could keep all the material stuff, but she wasn’t getting his dog. It had been nearly two years and it was time he thought about settling down again. Maybe Rebecca needed to hook him up with someone, take his mind off baiting her about Alan.
‘So is there anything else you can tell us at this stage?’ she asked Greg Withers, changing the subject and deciding to ignore Jake. Alan could wait also. Her head was pounding, the hangover kicking in, and as soon as they were done here, she needed more coffee and painkillers.
‘Not much at the moment,’ the pathologist told her. ‘I’m waiting on the result of the prints and I’ll let you know as soon as they come through. There is one thing I want you both to look at, though.’
He lifted the girl’s left hand. Scribbled in black ink across her palm, the words ‘Chapter 26’. Jake frowned.
‘She could have written that herself.’
‘Possible,’ Withers agreed. ‘But it’s thick ink. Most people who write on their hand use a biro. Besides, why use both hands?’
With that he lifted the right hand to reveal another reference; ‘page 323’.
‘Okay.’ Rebecca nodded, her tired mind working overtime. ‘So it’s a clue from the killer.’
She thought back to the Alphabet Murders; the killer’s calling card had been the victim’s initial carved into the back of their neck. Ink pen was less perverse, but didn’t match the rest of this killer’s MO, whose victims had been dispatched in a particularly cruel way.
‘What is he trying to tell us?’ she mused.
Withers placed the girl’s hands back by her sides.
‘Find the book he’s referring to,’ he said grimly, ‘and I’m guessing you will have a much clearer idea of what it is you’re dealing with.’
Finding the book the killer was referring to should have been an impossible task. Fortunately, it had been made easy for them.
The car belonging to the dead boy was found later that afternoon in a secluded spot on the outskirts of the city, known for courting couples. A squad car had found the abandoned vehicle and called it in. Twenty minutes later, Jake and Rebecca were on the scene.
With the car came ID. Ben Hogan and Kasey Miller were both nineteen and students at the local college. The bodies at the morgue had yet to be formerly identified, but it was looking likely that this was the missing couple. Ben’s wallet and Kasey’s purse had been left in the car, and the keys were still in the ignition, suggesting the killer had abducted them from this spot and driven them to the New Hope Baptist Church.
Why he had picked that spot had been confusing, until the book had been found.
Jake was on his haunches, using a miniature flashlight to sweep the interior of the car when he found the paperback under the front passenger seat. Slipping on the regulation white gloves, he carefully retrieved the book.
Grave Encounters by Amy Gallaty. A cheap looking novel with a tombstone on the cover.
Nice.
‘What have you got?’ Rebecca asked, coming up behind him.
‘Maybe nothing.’ But he didn’t think so. He had worked enough years in homicide to recognise the clues were being set up too neatly. Like a game. ‘It was 323, right?’
‘Yeah, 323, chapter twenty-six,’ Rebecca confirmed.
Carefully he opened the book to the correct page, careful not to disturb any evidence the killer may have left, and read.
The words described in gruesome detail the scene they had found at the church. The female victim buried alive; her boyfriend stabbed to death in an open grave beside her.
Jake’s lips twisted.
Sick son of a bitch.
Reading over his shoulder, Rebecca let out a low whistle. ‘Oh boy. He actually did it word for word.’