The Morning After (51 page)

LeRoy Chevalier should never have seen the light of day again. If not executed, then kept in a small dark cell until he rotted to death.

But there had been screwups from the beginning, with the arrest, with the crime scene, with Nikki’s article in the paper. As The Survivor had watched it all play out, he’d seen the eyes of the jury, unconvinced that LeRoy Chevalier was the true monster he was. They heard conflicting testimony and with the murder weapon missing and only circumstantial evidence of a bloody boot print, the case wasn’t as strong as it could have been.

Because Reed and his partner didn’t do their job.

Because Judge Gillette didn’t preside correctly.

Because Nikki Gillette blundered with her story.

Because the jury was weak.

So they had to be killed. One by one. Twelve spineless jurors, a worthless judge, two inept detectives, a bungling reporter and of course, the monster himself—LeRoy Chevalier, the worst kind of scum that had ever walked the planet.

Even now he heard Chevalier’s raspy voice:
What are you a girl? A stupid girl?
Just before the belt would snake from its worn loops.

Never again!
Never!

With all the mistakes at the trial, it had been a miracle he’d gotten three life sentences in prison.

But it hadn’t stuck, had it? And now, all those who hadn’t done their jobs, those who had sworn to protect the victims and justice, the jurors, the judge, the cops and even a reporter who almost blew the whole damned trial were paying. Along with the monster.

After swinging the gate wide, he drove through the muddy grass. His throat tightened a bit as he noticed the three twelve-year-old graves. Carol Legittel and two of her three children, poor Marlin and Becky. So foolish. Where had they been when he’d needed them? Why hadn’t they stopped the sickness? In his mind’s eye he remembered Chevalier ordering him onto his knees, then into bed…with…

He pounded a fist on the steering wheel and tears burned in his eyes.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about what he forced you to do. Don’t think about the pain and humiliation and the fact that no one helped you. Not your mother, not your brother, not your sister, not even the police. Pierce Reed, coming to the house, feigning concern, offering his card…his damned card…when he suspected what was going on! What a joke. What a fucking pathetic joke.

In his mind’s eye he saw the sweaty, scared bodies of his sister and brother and mother, the naked skin, the twisted bedsheets and he heard Chevalier’s wicked grunts and laughter.

No more.
NO MORE!

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror and saw the redness in his eyes. The useless tears.

Maybe he was a stupid-ass girl after all.

Blinking rapidly, he turned his attention to the small cemetery and did a quick U-turn. The deep hole he had dug was visible in his backup lights and he rolled across the graves of his mother, brother and stupid sister before stomping on the parking brake and cutting the engine.

He didn’t have much time. Reed would figure out what was happening as soon as he uncovered LeRoy Chevalier’s body at Le Blanc Cemetery.

He had to work fast.

All motion ceased.

The drone of the engine was extinguished.

The coffin stopped moving.

Nikki’s muscles froze.

Every nerve ending jittered.

She didn’t have to be told that he’d brought her to a cemetery. That within minutes, perhaps seconds, he’d start burying her alive. She was shaking. Now was the time to act. But what?

A loud creak and bang, like a tailgate of a truck opening. Suddenly the casket was moving again, scraping, being pulled out of its transport.

God help me!

Should she call out to him? Beg him to let her go? She knew it wouldn’t do any good, but she had to do something.
Any
thing.

A sharp rap.

“Hey, Nikki, you still awake?” the bastard asked.

She bit her tongue.

More rapping. “I know you’re awake.”

No…no, he didn’t. And she didn’t tell him, didn’t utter a word.

“Oh, fuck it.”

The coffin was moving again and she heard the muted rattle of wheels, like those on a hospital gurney. Rolling, rolling along bumpy terrain…no doubt taking her to the pit where the coffin would be dropped and buried. She had to do something!

All motion ceased.

No doubt he’d reached the grave.
Her
grave.

“Who would have done this?” Morrisette demanded.

Reed, worried sick about Nikki, remembered staring into the bloodied carcass of LeRoy Chevalier. They’d pulled out the coffin and opened it up, revealing a naked and slashed body. Chevalier’s head had nearly been severed and there were dozens of wounds upon his body made by a sharp, deadly weapon. Finally Reed understood that the Grave Robber had no doubt also hacked up Carol Legittel and her children. Two dead. One brutally wounded. “This was done by someone who hated him. Someone with a dark rage. This isn’t like the other killings where the deaths occurred without a lot of violence…No, Chevalier was chopped to death and then his body mutilated.” Reed knew enough about serial killers to realize that Chevalier’s murderer was someone close to him, someone he’d mistreated, someone whose hatred and need for vengeance was white-hot. “This one is someone who’s enraged that he got out of prison and he’s blaming everyone involved. The jurors, the judge and the woman who almost got the case thrown out years ago, Nikki Gillette.”

“Who the fuck is that?” Morrisette asked.

Reed was thinking hard as the storm swirled around the soaked officers working the scene. Time was running out. Nikki was trapped with the monster somewhere. “It’s someone like Ken Stern, Carol Legittel’s brother. He hated Chevalier, promised to kill him—and as an ex-Marine, he would know how—or Stephen Legittel, her ex-husband and father of the children Chevalier abused, or Joey Legittel, her son, the only one who survived the killings.”

“Chevalier beat him and forced him to have sex with his mother, right?” Morrisette said, eyeing the carnage. She visibly cringed at the crusted, dark purple slash surrounding Chevalier’s throat.

Reed nodded, felt the icy rain run down his collar. “According to Joey. Along with his siblings. It was kind of a sadistic sexual free-for-all with Chevalier holding the whip.”

“Deserved what he got,” Morrisette muttered, turning away from the open casket as Diane Moses’s team worked the area as they had at the previous crime scenes.

Cliff Siebert hung up his phone. “I got through to the hospital. Charlene Gillette can’t tell us anything. She’s traumatized. An officer tried to speak with her but she won’t or can’t say a word. Nearly catatonic. Whatever she saw pushed her over the edge.”

“Shit.” Morrisette glared up at the sky. Blinked against the rain.

Reed felt as if Nikki’s life were in his hands and she was slowly, irrevocably, slipping away.

“Wonder why the asshole was buried alone?” Morrisette asked, jabbing her chin at the coffin.

“Again, not like the others,” Reed thought, panic surging through him as the seconds ticked by. Where the hell did he have Nikki? “Send a unit to every graveyard in the city,” he said, but his mind was turning wildly, remembering the trial twelve years ago. The bleak courtroom. Judge Ronald Gillette sitting imperiously above the proceedings. The jurors watching raptly as the prosecution laid out its case. There was a clue here…there had to be. The killer had tricked him, steered him off course, but he had to…Lightning forked the sky. Suddenly he knew. As surely as if Lucifer had whispered the answer in his ear.

It was what this entire case was all about.

“Where was Carol Legittel buried?”

“Don’t know.” Morrisette shook her head.

Siebert said, “I do. I saw it in the file. She and her children are in Adams Cemetery, a small plot east of town.”

That was all Reed needed to hear. “Let’s go.” He was already running through the spitting rain to his El Dorado. “We don’t have much time.”

Nikki was sweating, her heart pounding wildly. She had to find a way out. Pushing on the lid didn’t do anything. She needed a weapon. Something she could use to pry the thing open from the inside out, but what? She had nothing. She was naked.

But her father was still wearing his clothes.

Her heart nearly stopped. Unless the killer had discovered it, Big Ron kept a loaded pistol strapped to his ankle.

Nikki’s hopes jumped at the feeble possibility. Getting to the gun, and fast, seemed impossible.

But it was her only chance.

And, by God, she was going to take it.

The pounding started again. “Wake up, bitch!” His voice was raw. Anxious. Good.

He could damn well rot in hell before she uttered a word. Her lungs could turn to dust before she gave him the satisfaction.

It was so hard to breathe, nearly impossible to move and panic had her in a stranglehold, but the only chance out of this trap was to reach her father’s weapon.
Please let it be there,
she thought, but knew the chances were slim. Surely the Grave Robber had found the small gun.

But there was a sliver of a chance that he’d overlooked it in his haste. She had to find out.

Using all her strength, she pressed down against her father’s body, compressing his flesh, making herself smaller so that she had room to scoot down and bend her knees. The soft flab of her father’s stomach gave way and she shuddered, her heart hammering, a horrid taste crawling up her throat. She slid. Possibly an inch. Maybe less. But she could barely move and as she stretched her hand along his pant leg, gathering the fabric, she knew her chance of survival was small.

Infinitesimal.

You bastard
, she thought.
You goddamned animal.

She felt the top of her father’s boot. That was a good sign, right? Maybe the killer thought the ankle strap was part of her father’s shoes.

She strained. Hard. Every muscle aching, her fingertips brushing the top of the holster.

She heard a chain rattling, a lock clicking, then the sound of a small motor. She had the sensation of the coffin being lifted off the cart or gurney that had brought her here.

Bang!

“Hey, Nikki. Can you hear me?” The killer’s voice was muted, but the words clear and her skin crawled. “How do you like sleeping with your father? It bites, doesn’t it. Kinda like it bites when you have to kill your own family because they sold you out!”

She didn’t answer. Felt ill. She pictured the Grave Robber not as the grisly, obsessed ogre he’d become but as he was twelve years ago. Then, seated in the courtroom at that gawky awkward age, Joey Legittel was ashen-faced, obviously scared to death, abused, forced to do terrible acts at the whim of LeRoy Chevalier. And then the court had made him tell about it.

Now, belatedly, she realized that he’d become a killer. He’d murdered his mother, sister and brother. He’d wounded himself, self-inflicted the wounds so cleverly that no one had guessed, then managed to hide the murder weapon and frame Chevalier with his own work boots. Now, he was crazed. Obsessed. No doubt because his tormentor had found freedom.

“Hey! You awake? Damn it. You nearly blew it, you know, you stupid bitch. And your old man, why the fuck didn’t he sentence the bastard to die? Why?”

Her lungs burning, she considered talking to him, trying to reason with him, but then remembered again all too vividly the tape with Simone’s hoarse, desperate voice as she pled, begged and bargained for her life. No matter what, Nikki wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Her shoulders straining, every muscle in her body cramped, she concentrated on easing the gun from its holster.

“Hey!
Hey!”

More thudding. Wild. Crazy. As if he were losing it. The coffin jerked and spun.

Nikki concentrated on the weapon.

“Guess what I’ve got out here with me, Nikki,” he taunted, and Nikki froze. She couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to. “Something of yours. And Simone’s.”

Not Mikado. Not Jennings!

She nearly screamed, wanted to scratch his eyes out.

“Right here in my pocket. Your panties, Nikki. I took ’em out of your drawer. My, aren’t they naughty? And Simone’s…”

Nikki thought she might be sick.

“You hear me? I’ve got them all. Little treasures from all my victims. You know who’s in there with you, right? Daddy dearest? Know what I got of his?”

She didn’t want to know.

“And old jockstrap. Looks like it was made a billion years ago. What do you think of that?”

Go blow, you stinkin’ pervert,
she thought, anger surfacing beneath her terror.

“I’ve been planning this for years…but I wasn’t gonna do it, not as long as LeRoy was behind bars. But he got out and so…too bad for all of you who failed me.”

He wanted pity? Was he kidding?

“Did you enjoy the tape of your friend?” he asked and Nikki’s skin turned to ice. “Did you hear her? How she begged.”

Nikki wanted to scream at him, but held her tongue. That’s what he wanted.

“They all did.” He waited. “You awake?” He pounded again, the sound echoing through the coffin and cutting into her brain. “Hey, Nikki!”

Tune him out. Don’t let him get to you!
She stretched until her muscles and tendons screamed. Her fingers touched something cold and hard. The tiny pistol! Tears filled her eyes. Now, if she could just get it into her hand!

“Oh, fuck it.”

The coffin began to move again.

This time it was descending into a pit Nikki could only imagine in her worst nightmare.

Reed pushed the El Dorado to the limit. Seventy miles an hour, eighty…ninety. His radio crackled and he figured he could be at the cemetery in less than fifteen minutes.

Would it be enough time?

God, he hoped so.

The thought of Nikki trapped in a casket and buried alive sent a chill as cold as all death down his spine. He stepped on it and the night flew by, the beams of his headlights cutting through the curtain of rain and bouncing on the slick pavement.