Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2)

Once Upon A

Killing

- A Gass County Novel #2

Isabell Lawless

Published in the United States of America,

Isabell Lawless, 2015

Acknowledgement

Thanks to you, dear reader, for picking up this book. You are my primary and most important person and therefore needs to be the very first in line waving your hands for appreciation hugs. To you I am forever grateful.

Thank you, Linda Kage, for another wonderful book cover.  With the illustration you captured the essence of the novel’s main character.

Ashley Hartman, thank you for your great editing talent of the English language in this book, and many of my other ones as well. Without your talent my books would live a mediocre life.

My biggest thank you goes out to my family for making my writing a possibility.  Love you all very much. 

“
Trust is built with consistency.
”

-
Lincoln
Chafee

Prologue

“You don’t have to do this, Mary. Really, I’m not in contact with him anymore. I promise. Please, don’t do this. Please.” Sheer pleading spread in her voice.

“People don’t
have
to do certain things, but some take pure pleasure and delight in performing them. And this is my type of act. I’m certainly in favor of this type of deed.” The sharp blade of the kitchen knife scraped along the stone wall, roughing up the thin surface, as she walked slowly down the steps of the stairs Lucy had just fallen; rolled down hard, hitting each and every wooden step like a tumble weed in the breezy Arizona desert, until the stone tile on the bottom floor had risen up and broken her nose, shaken her insides to jelly.

“You should have stayed away from him all those years. I watched you, you God preaching slut. How you acted around him, how you giggled when he picked you up and had you sit on the back of his black moped, and his early morning steps of shame going down your parents’ wooden porch.” The empty house echoed with creaking wooden floor boards, as Mary’s footsteps descended down the old roughed up steps in a leisurely pace, the sizeable blade held steadily in her small hand, giving away rasp after rasp along the wall.

“But, you were so little then, Mary.”

“I wanted him.” She stopped. “And you snatched him away from my hands. Do you know how long I’ve hated you for that? How long I’ve wanted to make you pay for your actions? You’re a slut, Lucy. A dirty, dirty slut. How he could ever be with you, is beyond my imagination.” Five more steps unfolded in front of her feet until she would reach Lucy’s body on the bottom floor.

“But Mary, please, I’m not the only one who has been with him, and we were not even together for very long. Please, I don’t know why you’re punishing me?” Tumbling down the enormous amount of steps had done vile damage to her head, and she noticed she hadn’t been able to keep a steady head since she’d landed with a thud on the hard floor. Her own two legs seemed more like those of an octopus’s, slithering distressed on the floor unsuccessful in the attempt to move her body somewhere else. An unexpected fire broke through one of her feet still trembling on the bottom step of the staircase, then it spread; calf, above knee, mid-thigh, and no matter how much her arms waved in defense in the glum reality, the intense burn hit the epicenter of her stomach. Through the blurry vision shading her eyes she noticed Mary’s figure taking a step away and up a few steps on the staircase, only to sit back comfortably, leaning her small slender body back against the wooden steps behind her.

“Is it slippery?” The fuzzy figure asked. “Is that why you’re fumbling?”

“No, I… I can’t grip it. Mary, help me. Please!”

“You took a ghastly slam to the head when you landed, Lucy. It must be it. You seem oddly disoriented, and your leg is bleeding red like a newly slaughtered pig. Don’t you know there is a knife sitting in your chest?”

Grunts filled the space below the last few steps of the staircase. Apart from that, nothing else but the grandfather clock’s tick-tock roamed the space of the house.

“Although, I’d love to sit here and watch you squeal, I have a man to find, so I’ll leave you alone in your agony. Bon voyage, Lucy. Bon voyage.”

Chapter One

“Hey, guys. Long time no see. Good place to ogle some gorgeous women tonight, am I right?”

His eyes flew to each round female bottom sitting perched up high on the long row of chairs along the full bar next to their booth.

“Sweet Jesus. Just look at that. Da’amn.”

“Can’t do so. Goes against everything I work for. If you make one move towards any of those girls I’ll handcuff you and let you rot in the back of my cruiser. Maybe I’ll try out my new taser right there where that vein of yours throbs under your skin by your lower neck. Brody, the well built, stiff muscle house and Sheriff of the small town, tilted his glass of amber liquid at one of the girls further down the bar, “I just gave Kerri over there a warning for speeding a few nights ago. She’s still pissed at me, by the looks she’s throwing over here.”

“You made your decision a long time ago, man. Being the long arm of the law in the city definitely has its pitfalls.”

“It’s in my blood and I’m loving it. Leave it, Wayne.” The cold beer glass briefly touched Brody’s lips before he put it back down on to the table. “But as I said, if you don’t keep that shirt on tonight and behave yourself, at least while I’m around, I will gladly put you in the slammer for tonight and have someone else pick you up there in the morning. Maribel even put a new mattress on the bed in the holding cell, which might actually be better than some random female mattress possibly containing any haphazard mixture of foreign liquids.”

His last comment made the three faces around the table all twist in disgust.

“Dude, first of all,
that
was gross, and secondly, don’t be so fucking pissy. Can’t you just enjoy the gorgeousness of booty in this place tonight? Geez. You need more than a beer to loosen up, Brody.”

He knew goading him wouldn’t make for a pleasurable evening for anybody and decided to let his wandering eyes steer off the women at the bar. At least some of them. Unless they were sitting really close, and were wearing a thong peeking just slightly above the back of a pair of tight jeans. He decided to focus on the guys around the table instead, at least at this moment.

Until Brody decided to leave and he could do what he always did best: flirt, maybe touch a little, and if he was lucky, which he usually was… okay, almost always, he’d have someone take him home tonight for some tumble among the bed sheets. Clean ones.

“Well, cheers guys and thanks for coming out tonight,” Jefferson, tucked into the corner next to Brody raised his tall glass of deep brown ale and waited for the other three scooted into the booth to join him, clinking glass to glass.

“Let’s get hammered, because I have Raylyn on speed dial tonight. She owes me one from last weekend when she went scrapbooking, leaving me home with Nova for two days.”

“Wish I had a good looking girl like that. What a rack.”

“Shut it Wayne, or I’ll use Brody’s cuffs and fucking lock you in the men’s room until someone comes and saves your rotten body.” Jefferson’s eyes alone could have killed him on the spot had he been a cyborg, luckily this wasn’t part of some sci-fi story but the reality of Downer’s Pub in town.

Bryce kept quiet and had already downed half his glass of beer and motioned for the waitress passing by to get him another one, pronto.

“Cool it Bryce, we’ve got all night. You don’t have anyone waiting for you at home anymore so enjoy the freedom.” Brody’s voice suddenly hesitated ending the sentence, while both Jefferson and Wayne looked at each other as if in pain and shook their heads at the Sheriff’s blunt stupidity and downed half of their beers as well. They were all relieved to find the waitress tapping the tip of her pen at the pad of paper in her hand, ready to take their orders breaking the not so amicable feel around the table.

“A plate of nachos, and load on the jalapenos. Oh, and four more beers, please.” Brody stated firmly in his best police voice to the young waitress chewing away on her visible gum while writing the easy order down in just seconds.

“You know what, two pitchers of beer for the table instead,” Bryce had suddenly awoken from his slumber in the opposite corner and downed the very last of his glass and sat it down hard on the table, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Okay, got it,” the waitress swung her brown hair over her shoulders and turned to leave the group of men behind her, when Wayne broke the silence and offered to help her carry the weight of the beer filled pitchers from the bar to the table, just to be shot down with a small giggle and pink cheeks.

“You don’t even know how old she is? Do you have to make a move on everything female?”

“Oh, Officer Moody, what’s grabbing you by the balls tonight? And by the way, I try to stay clear of female goats; they tend to make funny noises when crowded.”

Jefferson’s rumbling laugh was covered with a slight cough. He eyed Bryce across the table chewing nervously on his lower lip waiting for those pitchers of beer to arrive back at the table. As quickly as possible.

“Anyway, to lighten up this evening… oh, and sorry about Claire, Bryce, she’s obviously a bitch and doesn’t deserve you,” Jefferson rumbled. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, I have something kinda worth mentioning.”

The abrupt sight of two large, overflowing beer pitchers cut off the declaration about to come, making the four guys eye the golden brown amber with the same eyes a hungry baby craves a bottle of milk, or a boob. Bryce filled his glass to the brim and downed half of his, again.

“Um, where was I…”

“You had something to tell us,” Brody sipped lightly, letting his tongue caress away some of the white foam collecting on his upper lip, just to notice a woman following the movement of his tongue while she was walking by.

“Bet she could loosen up that spring you’ve churned tight back there. Nice ass too.”

Brody gave him a hard kick on his chin and a stern look. “Shut it, Wayne, and let Jefferson finish.”

“Yes, sir,” Wayne saluted him resulting in yet another kick under the table.

“So, the business is going really well right now, and I was able to sell mom and dad’s house this weekend. Finally.”

“That’s actually awesome, man. Congrats!” Wayne and Brody cheered while Bryce simply grunted and nodded in Jefferson’s direction.

“I know, right? And I’m not sure why this last weekend turned out so damn special, because as we all know, I’m never in the favor of luck.” They gave a united nod in agreement. “But I also managed to get mom a place at the Holliander Senior Palace…” The guys all hummed in agreement of his sudden success, happy things were falling into place for his mom, and dug into the nachos one hand at a time “…and to get Raylyn pregnant.”