The Blind (29 page)

Shelley Coriell is the award-winning author of romantic suspense and smart, funny novels for teens.
The Broken
, her debut book in the Apostles series featuring Parker Lord's elite but maverick FBI team, was named one of the Best Romances of Summer 2014 by
Publishers Weekly
and a Top Pick by
Romantic Times Book Reviews
. An avid foodie and former restaurant reviewer, Shelley lives in Arizona with her family and the world's neediest rescue Weimaraner. For Apostles news and bonus content, sign up for Shelley's newsletter: ShelleyCoriell.com/newsletter

You can learn more at:

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Mancos, Colorado
Tuesday, June 9
1:48 a.m.

T
he cry was low and tortured, pulled from the gut of a man who'd been to hell and back.

Kate Johnson threw off her covers and grabbed the box of paper clips she kept on her nightstand. “I'm coming, Smokey Joe,” she called even though the old man couldn't hear her. He was too far away, trapped in a time and place known only to his tormented mind. She tore down the steps of the cabin and into Smokey's bedroom.

“Safety pins! Where the hell are my safety pins?” Smokey's hands clawed at the covers she'd tucked around him four hours ago. “Dammit to hell! I need those pins.”

Kate took one of his hands in hers and dropped a handful of paper clips onto his palm. “Here you go.”

His knobby fingers clamped around the bits of metal, and he dipped them in a frantic but practiced rhythm. Eventually his cries died off and gave way to moans. Then came the sobs. They were the worst.

As she had done dozens of times over the past six months, she sank to her knees beside his bed and gathered him in her arms. Papery skin over old bones. The sour-sweet smell of cold sweat. Her cheek rubbed against the sprigs of gray hair on his head. As the sobs tapered off and his trembling ceased, she looked at her arms and shook her head. How could a hug, nothing more than two arms,
her arms
, stop a war?

When the old man's breathing returned to normal, he opened his sightless eyes. “That you, Katy-lady?”

She squeezed his bony knee. “Yes.”

Relief smoothed the lines of terror twisting his face.

She left his bedside and opened the top drawer of the bureau. “Who was it?”

He inched himself to an upright position. “Never got a name on this one. He wasn't talking by the time ground grunts got him in the chopper. Mortar round blew off half his neck.”

“What do you remember about him?” This was another thing she didn't understand, Smokey's need to relive the pains of the past. Yesterday's horrors should be bundled up and tucked away. They had no place in this world. She reached into the drawer for a clean nightshirt.

“He had red hair, color of a firecracker, and he held a picture of his momma in his hand. We lost him before we got to Da Nang, but I made sure the hospital crew got the picture and told them to tell that boy's momma she'd been right there with her son when he needed her, offering comfort only a momma can.”

Mommas don't offer comfort.
The thought snuck up on her, a jarring uppercut to the chin.

“Katy-lady, you okay?”

The bureau drawer slammed shut. “I'm fine.”

She handed Smokey Joe the clean nightshirt and sat on the foot of the bed. That's when she noticed the soft voices coming from the radio on the nightstand. A late-night talk show host was talking to William from Michigan about a school shooting in New Jersey that left two eleven-year-olds dead. “This!” She jabbed a hand at the radio. “What is
this
?”

“Don't know.” Smokey raised his gaze to the ceiling. “Can't see.”

She snapped off the radio, silencing the voices. “You were listening to the news before bed again, weren't you?”

“You going to start nagging me? I don't pay you to ride my ass.”

“No, you pay me to take care of you, and if you don't want to take out any new help wanted ads, listen to me. Your doctor said no news before bedtime. Those stories from the Mideast bring back too many war memories.” And trigger nightmares of a time when he desperately tried to save bloody and broken bodies with only a handful of safety pins and a heart full of hope.

His gnarled fingers fumbled with the buttons of his sweat-soaked nightshirt. She reached over to help.

“I wasn't listening to no war news. There was another one of them Barbie murders. This one right here in Colorado. All the stations are yammering about it.”

Barbie murders? What an insane world, filled with criminals without conscience, a public fascinated by the gory and gruesome, and media ready to unite the two for the sake of ratings. She didn't miss the crazy world of broadcast news and had no regrets that she hadn't seen a newscast in almost three years, not since she'd
been
the news.

She unfastened Smokey's next two buttons. “So a
Barbie
was killed?”

“Yep. Course the coppers don't call 'em Barbies. That's just my name, but I think that makes six now, all TV gals, all stabbed to death in their homes.”

She grew still. “Broadcast journalists? Stabbed?”

“Yeah, not too pretty, either. Each gal had more than fifty knife wounds. Now why the hell does someone need to stab a body fifty times?”

Her hand sought the scar between her right eye and temple.
Because twenty-five isn't enough to kill?

“I'll tell you why.” Smokey jabbed a crooked index finger at his temple. “He ain't right in the head.”

Kate slipped the shirt off Smokey's bony shoulders, her own shoulders relaxing. As an investigative reporter she'd seen up close the machinations of the criminal mind. She knew the mean and twisted and evil that perpetuated crimes against humanity. There were plenty of bad people in this world, plenty of knife-wielding crazies, and the twenty-five scars that crisscrossed her body had nothing to do with Smokey's
Barbies
. “Haven't we both determined the world in general isn't right in the head?”

“But this guy's sick, scary sick. He does that creepy thing with the mirrors.”

The curtains on Smokey's window shifted with the night breeze, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “Mirrors?”

“After he kills them Barbies, the screwball goes around breaking every mirror in the house. Shatters every single one. You ever heard of such a crazy thing?”

Sounds ricocheted through her head. The swoosh of a hammer. The crack of glass. The obscenely happy tinkle of falling mirror fragments.

Smokey's shirt, soaked in sweat and terror, fell from her hand.

Tuesday, June 9, 2:20 a.m.
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Hayden Reed stared at the shards of mirror that once covered an entire wall in Shayna Thomas's entryway. The largest piece was no bigger than two inches square.

Insanity was one hell of a wrecking ball.

He squatted to study the destruction, looking for traces—blood, footprints, hairs, fibers, anything that would lead him to the killer he'd been tracking for five months. All he saw in the broken mirror were distorted bits of his face, a macabre reflection of a man who'd been slammed by a wrecking ball of his own.

Parker Lord's voice echoed through his head. “Hold off on the Colorado slaying,” his boss had said. “Hatch can cover for you and bring you up to speed when you get things wrapped up in Tucson with your family.”

Hayden stood. His family was fine.

Time to hunt for the Butcher. But first he needed to track down Sergeant Lottie King.

A uniform directed Hayden through the living room and down a hallway where he came face-to-face with a short, round African American woman. Her crinkly gray hair hugged her head in a tight knot, and she wore a simple navy suit and a Glock 22 holstered under her left arm. On her feet were the highest, reddest heels he'd ever seen outside a whorehouse.

“Chief warned me some FBI hotshot was coming in, and you got hotshot written all over you.” The sergeant crossed her arms over her chest. “My boys said you're one of Parker Lord's men, a fucking Apostle. That true?”

Hayden noticed the tone. It happened often at the mention of Parker's Special Criminal Investigative Unit, a small group of FBI specialists known for working outside the box and, according to some, outside the law. Some media pundit nicknamed them the Apostles. Like Parker, Hayden didn't care about names, only justice. “Yes.”

“Heard you boys play by a different set of rules.”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “We don't play.”

Her jaw squared in a challenge as she jutted her chin toward the shattered mirror in the hallway. “So tell me, Agent I-Don't-Play, what's your take?”

Shayna Thomas had been found dead in her bedroom four hours ago. Multiple stab wounds. No signs of sexual trauma. Shattered mirrors. All the earmarks of another Broadcaster Butcher slaying. Hayden pointed to a spot three feet down the hall. “The unsub stood there. One strike. Used a long-handled, blunt instrument he brought with him. Carefully positioned his body out of the glass trajectory. You'll find no blood near this or any of the other broken mirrors. You'll also find no footprints, no fingerprints, no trace, and no witnesses.” The other Butcher crime scenes had been freakishly void of evidence.

The sergeant locked him in a stare-down. He studied the wide, steady stance of those high heels, the indignant puff of her chest, and the single corkscrew of hair that stuck out above her right ear.

“And your take, Sergeant King?”

The police sergeant's nostrils flared. “I think we got us one fucked-up son of a bitch, and I can't wait to nail his ass to the splintered seat of a cold, dark cell where he'll never see the light of day.”

Early in his law enforcement career, he'd learned there were two kinds of people behind the shield: those seeking personal gain—a paycheck, ego strokes, power—and those seeking justice. Like him, the woman in the red shoes was one of the latter. Hayden unclasped his hands. “And I can't wait to hand you a hammer.”

A smile wrinkled the corner of her eyes, and he saw what he needed: respect.

“Damn glad you're here, Agent Reed.”

“For the record, Sergeant King, I hear you aren't much of a slouch, either.”

“Ahh, a pretty face
and
a smooth talker. I think I might be able to work with you.” The smile in her eyes dimmed as she motioned him to follow her down the hall.

“Time line?” Hayden asked.

“A man out walking his dog hears breaking glass as he passes Thomas's house. He calls the station at 10:32. Beat officer arrives at 10:37. He makes repeated shout-outs, but no one responds. He looks through the front window, sees the broken mirror, and calls for backup. When the second uniform arrives, they enter and discover the victim in the master bedroom.”

“Positive ID?”

“Confirmed. Shayna Thomas. Homeowner.”

“Current status?”

“Crime Scene Division's still processing.” Sergeant King's red shoes drew to a halt. “This is one mother of a scene.”

“Blood.” Hayden didn't frame the single word as a question. They'd found excessive amounts of blood at the other Butcher crime scenes, five since January.

“It's the fucking Red Sea in there. You better watch those shiny shoes of yours.” Lottie pointed to the door in front of them. “I'm warning you. It ain't pretty.”

Wrongful death never was.

Inside the bedroom, blood peppered four walls, striped the white down comforter, and clung to the fan centered on the ceiling. The victim lay on the ground in front of a dresser. Blood soaked her T-shirt and jogging shorts and matted her hair. She was a brunette, slim, probably attractive. Hard to tell. Lacerations decussated her face, arms, neck, and abdomen, but as he expected, the V at her legs was blood- and injury-free.

He saved the hands for last. He always did. It was hard to think clearly after seeing them, hard to stop being the dispassionate evaluator. Drawing air into his tightening lungs, he turned to Shayna Thomas's bloody hands. They rested on her breasts, fingers intertwined as if in prayer, a gesture of peace amidst the chaos of murder.

For a moment he lowered his eyelids and calmed the rage that simmered in a place he refused to acknowledge.

Those bloody hands beckoned him, pulled him in, and wouldn't let go. His boss, Parker Lord, was wrong. Hayden needed to be here.

Tuesday, June 9, 2:23 a.m.
Mancos, Colorado

Run. Fast and far.

Kate's hands shook worse than Smokey Joe's as she yanked the saddlebags out of the closet and slammed them on her bed. From the bureau, she hauled out the few things she called her own: underwear, scarves, T-shirts, chambray overshirts, jeans, and her leathers. She jammed all but the leathers into the bags and threw in her brown contacts and hair dye. Meager belongings compared to her on-air days, a time when she wore a different face. A face not yet hacked by a madman. A madman who hadn't stopped after the butcher job on her.

The wooden floor creaked behind her. She dropped her leathers and spun. Something shifted in the shadow of the doorway. She reached for the ceramic lamp on the nightstand, then set it down when Smokey stepped out of the darkness.

He cleared his throat with a rough cough. “You taking off?”

Her hand dropped to her side, and she tried not to look into his sightless eyes, eyes filled with confusion and something else.
Oh God, please don't let him look at me like that.
“Yes.” What more could she say?
I'm sorry for disappointing you. I'm sorry for leaving because there's a madman roaming the country who vowed to kill me and who has since murdered six other women.

She yanked the saddlebag zippers closed. How stupid to think she could stop running, stupid to stay in one place so long, and stupid to put an old, blind man like Smokey Joe in danger. She picked up the leather pants and jammed her legs into them. The Shayna Thomas attack had occurred in Colorado Springs, only three hundred miles from Smokey Joe's cabin in southwestern Colorado.

Smokey scratched the stubble on his chin. “That big order? You got it done?”

“Order?” She grabbed her helmet from the top shelf of the closet.

“That gal out of San Diego who wants all them angels. You get 'em done?”

Kate couldn't think about their online jewelry store or tourmaline angels. She thought only about getting away. “Order's done. It's boxed and on the table.”