Her Last Scream Read online

  Her Last Scream

  J.A. Kerley

  Dedication

  To the amazing Miz Linda Lou and the deliciously evil Nurse Jane

  (here insert the author’s wicked laughter)

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Coming Soon: The Death Box

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Treeka Flood counted the Beef-a-Roni cans in her shopping buggy for the third time, one, two, three. She rounded an aisle without noticing, busy counting jars of tamales, one, two, three. Boxes of macaroni, one, two –

  Treeka froze. Counted again, one, two …

  Treeka saw the final macaroni box under the packs of tortillas – three! – and sighed with relief. The macaroni was Mueller’s Large Elbows, the only kind Tommy would eat, saying smaller sizes felt “wormy” in his mouth. Count the tortillas again to be safe: One, two, three. There had to be three of everything: One for the meal, one for the back-up in the pantry, at least one more for the food cache in the basement. If Tommy saw something missing, she’d have to wear the big sunglasses.

  Checking her list, Treeka absent-mindedly wheeled to the next aisle. Sardines in mustard sauce. One, two, three. Bumble Bee Tuna in oil …

  Last month Treeka had forgotten to buy more canned hams after Tommy used two on a fishing trip. He’d noticed the open shelf space – he looked for infractions – and Treeka had to wear the big sunglasses for a week to hide her blackened eyes.

  At the end of the aisle Treeka saw chubby, red-haired Brenda Mallory chattering with a supermarket employee. Treeka froze and angled her face away, becoming an anonymous shopper checking a label. Mallory was Treeka’s apartment-building neighbor from two years back, before Treeka’d gotten married and moved from Denver to the ranch near Estes Park, Colorado.

  Mallory pushed her buggy toward the checkout lanes and Treeka relaxed. Talking to Brenda would only cause trouble. And what could Treeka possibly say when Brenda asked about Treeka’s new life?

  Treeka counted every item again, then backpedaled one aisle, expecting to see Tommy. The only inhabitants of the corridor were a college kid with a six-pack of Red Bull and a tall and white-haired elderly lady pushing a buggy.

  No Tommy.

  Panic slammed Treeka’s heart and she yanked the buggy back another aisle. Tommy wasn’t there, either. How had she gotten so far ahead?

  Oh Jesus, please no … where is he?

  There! Tommy jogged past the far end of the aisle, eyes knifing down the lane, his hands bunched into fists. He glowered up at the aisle number: Six. Tommy must have been back in five when Treeka somehow wandered ahead to aisle eight.

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit …

  Tommy strode to Treeka, the metal plates on his cowboy boots ticking like a bomb. They were alone in the aisle and he grabbed Treeka’s arm. “Where were you?” he hissed, pushing back his gray Stetson, cold green eyes daring Treeka to lie. “Where did you go?”

  Treeka let her mouth droop open, trying to appear puzzled. Dumb was the best place to hide.

  “I’ve been right here, hon,” she said, lifting a box of crackers like she’d been in aisle six all the time. “Didn’t you see me? I got my shoppin’ dress on.” Tommy made Treeka shop in a bright yellow dress because it made her easier to see in a crowd.

  Tommy slapped the crackers to the floor. “I goddamn asked where you were,” he repeated. “You too stupid to understand English, or what?”

  Treeka laughed like Tommy was making a joke. “I been here all the time, babe,” she said, stooping to retrieve the crackers. “You must have been going around an end same time I was and we crossed past each other.”

  Tommy studied the items in Treeka’s buggy, then did something to run blades of ice down Treeka’s spine: He smiled. It was the same smile Treeka had fallen in love with twenty-six months ago, wide and thin-lipped and brimming with teeth. But now Tommy’s smile terrified her; it meant the snakes in his head were heated up and moving.

  “What’s this?” he asked, reaching into the buggy and tapping a can of tuna. Treeka instinctively started counting tuna cans. One, two … Then she saw what was wrong.

  Oh Jesus no. Oh shit.

  “Tommy …” Treeka whispered. “I didn’t mean to –”

  “It’s tuna, Treek. From aisle eight, right? How many numbers is five from eight?”

  “I got ahead of myself, Tommy,” Treeka explained as her breath ran out. “I thought you w-was right behind me.”

  “I asked how many numbers from five to eight, Treek?”

  “Th-three.” Treeka felt her heart pounding in her chest.

  “How close do I tell you to stay to me?”

  “One aisle, Tommy. But I thought you were right behind me. An’ I got on my shopping dress.”

  Tommy’s eyes tightened into slits. “You thinking about running off, Treek? Finding some lesbian to live with? I saw one over by the produce.”

  Treeka shook her bright, artificial curls. Keeping her hair looking like Taylor Swift’s bouncy ’do took an hour a day, but it was the style Tommy demanded. “Jeez, Tommy. I dunno where you get this stuff. I just got ahead of myself. Gimme kiss, babe.”

  Treeka puckered. Tommy stared. “You lied to me, Treek. But the tuna told the truth.”

  Treeka tried another smile. “You’re so smart, sweets. Like a detective. But I wasn’t lying, I forgot where I was.”

  Tommy grunted as an elderly woman entered the aisle, pushing her buggy toward them. Up close the woman didn’t look so old, mid-sixties maybe, dressed in a blue sweat suit and pink running shoes, smooth in her motions, like she really did run. The pair fell silent as the woman walked by, shooting a look their way. When she was past, Tommy’s hand lashed out to the soft skin beneath Treeka’s breast, pinching it between thumb and forefinger.

  “N-no, Tommy. Please …�
��

  He squeezed hard, a hot burst of instant agony. Treeka clenched her teeth. If she made a sound he’d pinch again. If she stayed quiet, one would be all she’d have to endure. After several seconds Tommy’s hand fell away and Treeka let out a gasp.

  A surprise voice from the side. “Excuse me, miss. Are you all right?”

  The older woman had seen or heard something.

  “I’m fine as I can be, ma’am.” Treeka forced a smile, thinking Please go away, lady. You’ll only make things worse. “My dear hubby and me is jus’ talking.”

  The woman gave Tommy a flinty appraisal. “You don’t sound fine, miss,” she said. “You sound like you’re about to cry.”

  “Oh no, ma’am,” Treeka said. “That’s how my voice always is.”

  Tommy got tired of the woman. “Get the fuck out of here, you old dyke,” he snarled. “This here’s private bidness between a man and his woman.”

  The woman nodded to herself like a judgment had been confirmed. “I’m going to find the manager,” she said, looking at Tommy like something a dog had left on the floor. “I know what you are, mister. I know exactly what you are.”

  The woman left her buggy in the aisle and strode toward the store’s office. Tommy grabbed Treeka’s forearm and yanked her toward the exit. “Look what you’ve done to me this time,” he whispered as they crossed the parking lot. “Now I gotta teach you a real lesson.”

  Chapter 2

  Spring in coastal Alabama is a violent time, weather-wise. Two inches of tumultuous, lightning-driven rain an hour is not unusual, nor is it rare for blue to rule the sky minutes thereafter, as if all has been forgiven. Gulls return to the air and the whitecaps on Mobile Bay settle into a mild green chop beneath warm breezes built for sailing.

  I drove to work from my beachfront home on Dauphin Island, thirty miles south of Mobile, still stuck in the first movement of the meteorological symphony, purple-black clouds laced with bolts of jagged lightning and rain sweeping down in roiling sheets. Smarter drivers took shelter in coffee shops and donut joints. I was doing fifteen miles an hour, squinting through my windshield and trying to recall when the wiper blades were last replaced.

  Three years ago? Four?

  A semi raced in the opposite direction, sloshing another gallon of water over my windshield. I peered into rippling gray and slowed to ten miles an hour. My cell phone rang and I pulled it from my jacket pocket, the word HARRY on the screen. Harry Nautilus was my best friend and detective partner in the homicide division of the Mobile, Alabama, Police Department. Harry kept me grounded in reality and I kept him … I’m not sure, but it’ll come to me.

  “I’m at the morgue, Carson,” Harry said. “There’s a situation here.”

  I was ticking my head side to side like a metronome, trying to see through the split second of clear behind the wiper blade. “What is it?” I asked. “The situation.”

  “Just get your ass over here, pronto.”

  “My wipers are shot, Harry. I’m stopping.”

  “You and that damned ancient truck. Where you at?”

  My truck was old but not ancient, perhaps suggesting antiquity by being the color of the pyramids, roller-coated with gray ship’s paint. Say what you will about aesthetics, I’ve never been bothered by rust or barnacles.

  I said, “I’m just off the DI Parkway near the city limits sign. I’m pulling into the fish shack.”

  “Hang tight and I’ll send the cavalry.”

  “The what?”

  Harry hung up. There was a coffee shop past the fish restaurant, but getting there meant crossing twenty feet of open pavement. Lightning exploded above and I sank lower in the seat.

  A minute passed and I heard a howling. I thought it was the wind, until it turned into a siren, followed by lights flashing blue and white in my mirror. I sat up as a Mobile police cruiser pulled alongside. I wiped condensation from the window with my sleeve and saw a face on the driver’s side, a hand gesturing me to lower my window.

  Rain whipped in and a pretty young black woman in a patrol cap and uniform yelled, “Stay on my bumper. But not too close, right?”

  I was perplexed for a three-count, then saw the plan. The cruiser whipped away and I pasted myself fifty feet off its bumper. When we hit the highway another set of flashers slid in fifty feet behind me. I was bookmarked by light and sound and we blasted toward the morgue at perilous speed, though I can’t say how high exactly, never taking my eyes from the leading cruiser, my sole point of navigation.

  Fifteen white-knuckled minutes later our impromptu caravan rolled to the entrance of the morgue, more correctly the pathology department of the Alabama Bureau of Forensics, Mobile office, a squat brick building by the University of South Alabama. I spent a fair amount of time in the morgue for two reasons; one was its ongoing collection of murdered humans, the other being the director, the brilliant and lovely Dr Clair Peltier, was my friend. Take that as you wish, you can’t go wrong.

  I pulled beneath the portico and parked beside the nearest NO PARKING sign. The cruiser protecting my flank sped away, leaving only the vehicle driven by the young officer. I waved thanks as she stopped on the far side of the portico, rain drumming across her cruiser.

  The driver’s-side window rolled down and the pretty face frowned at my trusty gray steed. “You really ought to get rid of that truck, Carson,” the woman called through the downpour. “You’ve had it for what – eight years?”

  Her familiarity took me aback. “Almost nine,” I said. “How did you know how many –”

  “Carson Ryder …” she said, tapping her lips with a slender finger. “Started in uniform at age twenty-six, made detective at twenty-nine – a record. Paired with Detective Harry Nautilus from the beginning, first as mentor, then as detective partner. An avid swimmer, kayaker, angler.”

  I smiled at the recitation, common knowledge in the department.

  “A man whose intuition often battles his logic,” she continued. “At times a problem, but usually working out for the best.”

  “Pardon me?” I said.

  “Some might call you a womanizer,” she added, a puckish twinkle in her eyes. “But that’s too harsh. Better to say you’re a lover of beauty and a secret fan of poetry, mainly Cummings, Dickey, and Roethke.”

  My mouth was now open so wide that in the rain I might have drowned. I was sure I’d never seen the face before. And she was too pretty to forget.

  “We’ve met?” I said, flummoxed by the surreal exchange.

  “Don’t you remember holding me in your arms, Carson? Or the time we kissed?”

  “Uh …”

  Her radio crackled with a dispatcher’s voice. She canted her head to listen, then looked at me with a sigh. “Lightning blasted out traffic lights along Airport Road,” she said. “Time to go. But I expect I’ll see you soon enough.”

  Her window rolled up and she disappeared into the gray. I stared into the rain before recalling the building at my back and the reason for the wild ride that had started my day.

  I’m at the morgue, Harry had said. There’s a situation …

  Giving a final glance to the space where the woman’s cruiser had resided, as if the drenched asphalt held a clue to her identity, I turned and pushed through the door to the morgue, finding – as always – a dry and cold atmosphere spun through with molecules of violent death and human despair.

  Chapter 3

  Most folks checked in at the morgue, but I was such a frequent visitor the receptionist signed for me. A rubber stamp with my name would have been even easier. I continued to the main autopsy suite, seeing Harry in a corner beside forensics chief Wayne Hembree, a moon-faced black man with the build of a scarecrow beneath his limp white lab coat. Clair was leaning against the wall with a phone to her lovely cheek, talking about DNA. She looked up, winked one of the arctic-blue eyes, and returned to her conversation.

  Hembree tossed a sheaf of pages on a lab table and walked to the center of the room, Harry on his hee
ls. My partner was subdued, fashion-wise, his pink linen jacket riding an aloha shirt of hula girls strumming ukuleles. His pants were something between puce and plum; pluce, perhaps.

  We met at a gleaming autopsy table holding a woman’s body, slender and well proportioned and with the tightness of youth, mid-to-late twenties or so. Her hair was dark and her skin olive, an impression of Filipino perhaps, or Hispanic. There were abrasions on the legs and arms, probably rope burns. The hands were dirty and bruised and I saw fingerprint ink on the digits. The breasts looked odd, purpled and akilter. Someone had laid a white towel over her face.

  “Thanks for sending the escort,” I told Harry.

  He nodded toward the body. “It’s gonna be one of those days.”

  “Who am I looking at?” I asked.

  “Right now it’s Jane Doe,” Hembree said. “I’m running prints through the standard databases. Nothing so far.”

  Clair dropped the cell into the pocket of her green scrubs, the only woman I knew who could make the formless garment resemble a Versace gown. She stepped to the table and slipped the towel away. The woman’s head was bald, but I stared at the face.

  “No eyes,” I said, realizing it was a ridiculous thing to say.

  “Probably removed with a scooping tool,” Clair said, her voice devoid of emotion. “Could be something as simple as a spoon.”

  “What happened to the breasts?” I asked.

  “Contusions. They appear to have been singled out for punishment.”

  “Tell me about the hair,” I said. “Why is she bald?”

  “I found a few small nicks. Not a razor; electric clippers, maybe.”

  Hembree said, “A skinhead, maybe?”

  “No tats on the back?” I asked Clair. “No tramp stamp?” A tramp stamp was street slang for a tattoo across a woman’s lower back, generally but not always associated with women of low stature, either as perceived by themselves or others.

  Clair shook her head. “One postage-stamp-sized tat on her shoulder blade, a butterfly.” Hembree and Clair rolled the shoulder up and I saw the tat, a blue-and-orange butterfly that could have hidden beneath a quarter. The artwork was bright and delicate, the style and positioning of tat consistent with those seeking the current hipness of body art without going for the full Winehouse.