Dead Too Soon: A Thriller (Val Ryker series Book 3) Read online

  She hadn’t thought of that. She’d lied to protect Brad. Yet Hess had known he was her boyfriend all along. Yet another way she’d screwed up. “How did you know?”

  “It wasn’t hard. All the pictures you post on Facebook. All the chats with your friends. Remember a girl named Angi? Liked horses, psychology, and Taylor Swift. A year behind you in school. Lived in Reedsburg, if I remember.”

  Angi. Last year, the girl had asked to be Grace’s friend on social media. And even though they’d never actually met in person, they shared so many of the same interests, Grace accepted. “You hacked Angi’s page?”

  “I am Angi. Well, actually Carla is. All those months I spent in jail? You were my entertainment, Grace. Carla told me all of it. How Brad is going to a different college than you. The pink lace dress you wore for Homecoming. Pictures of you riding your horse that she took without you ever knowing.”

  Grace fought the urge to cry. She hurt with every breath. She felt betrayed by a friend who had never even existed. But most of all, she felt stupid.

  There was also a piece missing.

  The things Grace posted on social media might explain how Hess knew she liked Brad, but she’d never shared Aunt Val’s condition. Not with anyone. He couldn’t know about that. That part he had to be faking.

  “Aunt Val is going to find me, and she’ll kill you.”

  “And how is she going to do that, Grace? Infect me with MS? No, wait. Multiple sclerosis isn’t infectious.”

  Tears filled Grace’s eyes, and the room grew wavy. How did he know?

  “Doctors specialize, Grace.”

  Grace shook her head. He was lying. Trying to fool her. “You don’t know who her doctor is. Aunt Val is paranoid. She doesn’t do anything on the internet. She doesn’t even keep addresses in her phone, only a couple of numbers. And she sure doesn’t have her doctor in there.”

  “Your aunt didn’t give away her secret. You did. Once you allowed your social media account to post your location, it was pretty easy to guess the rest.”

  Grace’s face felt hot. She’d badgered Aunt Val to see a specialist. They had spent several days at the Cleveland Clinic’s Mellen Center, and Grace had posted a photo of the beautiful church in the middle of the clinic’s campus.

  It had never occurred to her that allowing her location to be posted would give away Aunt Val’s secret. Was that even possible? “You don’t know anything.”

  “You got me. I was guessing. The Cleveland Clinic is known for a lot of things. But between the symptoms I noticed and your expression just now, I’d say I guessed right.”

  “What…” Grace’s voice trembled, close to tears. “What do you want?”

  “Justice. You know that.”

  “What you’ve been doing, it has nothing to do with justice.”

  “And what would you know about it? Your biggest problems are your boyfriend not being accepted at UW-Madison and whether or not he’ll give you a tacky wrist corsage for the prom. That’s all you care about.”

  Grace wasn’t like that. That wasn’t all she cared about. “You don’t know anything about me. Not really.”

  “Don’t I?”

  Grace shook her head.

  “I know you have nightmares about me. You wake up seeing me standing over your bed holding a knife, just like I’m doing now.”

  Grace shook her head again.

  “And then what do I do, Grace? Cut you? Maybe start with your nightgown, slicing from the neck down, spreading it open? And once you’re lying there naked in front of me, where do I start cutting first?”

  His gaze skimmed over her, as if he was trying to decide on a spot.

  Grace’s pulse beat in her ears. A scream rose in her throat. She swallowed, over and over, forcing it back. She was going to be sick.

  “Where to sink the blade in first… Hmm… I’m going to have to think about that.” He drew out the words. “I’m going to have to think long and hard.”

  To Grace’s horror, tears swamped her eyes. She turned to the side, retching, and threw up on the mattress.

  Hess’s smile faded. He shot her a disgusted look, then spun around and walked out of the tiny room, slamming the door behind him.

  Leaving her alone in her mess.

  The tears flowed, coursing down Grace’s cheeks and puddling under her chin. Her body was trembling. Not just her hands and fingers, but all of her, as if every muscle was out of her control.

  Grace didn’t remember telling anyone about her nightmares, but she must have. How else would Hess know? The way he’d stared at her was straight out of her worst dreams. The way he’d held the knife blade. The way he’d talked about removing her clothes. Even though he hadn’t touched her T-shirt and jeans, she’d felt naked in front of him.

  Vulnerable.

  Violated.

  Broken.

  “No.” She half jumped, not realizing she’d said the word out loud until it echoed in the empty room. “No, no, no.”

  Grace forced the tears to stop, rubbing her cheeks against her shoulders, drying them as best she could. Grace had been through horrible things. Some of her first memories were of watching her grandmother struggle with losing control of her body and finally dying from MS. Then came Grace’s mom’s cancer. Her mom’s death. Grace had made it through all of that. She was strong. Aunt Val said so all the time.

  Aunt Val also liked to say Grace was smart. And maybe between the two, she could figure something out.

  Chapter

  Eleven

  The injustices perpetrated against me started early. Suspension from school for no reason. Accusations of theft where there was none. Police reports turning a curious boy into a criminal. Authority figures determined to hold on to their pitiful bit of power threatened by a sharp-minded child. A father who was fond of the belt. A neighbor who believed a boy’s dog should die for digging up a few fucking flowers.

  I was accused of murdering a girl in Nebraska when I was only twenty. I was tried for that crime, and the jury found me innocent. Justice, right? Yet from that day forward, I was not treated as an innocent man. They shit on my reputation. They destroyed my good name.

  I will never get that back.

  From the moment I was first accused, I was a marked man.

  I left that state, left my aging mother, and moved back to Wisconsin, thinking that in the state of my birth I could get a fair shake. But the prejudice followed me. I had a hard time finding a job and had to settle for working on a dairy farm. Milking twice a day and shoveling shit for shit pay. But I kept my head down. I tried to get along.

  My mistake.

  The trouble started as it always did. With a woman. A married woman. A woman who wanted me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  I thought the trouble was over when she up and ran away, but I was wrong about that, too. Because the police decided—Chief Valerie Ryker decided—that Kelly Ann hadn’t disappeared. That instead, Kelly Ann had been murdered.

  And it all happened again. Only this time there was no justice at all. Chief Valerie made me the monster. And the system stole everything I loved.

  —Convicted murderer Dixon Hess, from his A MANIFESTO FOR JUSTICE, as received by the Wisconsin State Journal.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Val

  Big wet drops of rain hit Val’s face and dripped from her hood. Her left hand was numb with cold, her right numb from her disease. She could only wish the lack of feeling extended to her emotions.

  When she first became a cop, she’d had to work hard on compartmentalizing her feelings so she could perform her job. Now she didn’t even have to think about it most times. She’d shovel the fear and tragedy and despair into a storage locker in the back of her mind, do what needed to be done, then pull it out later and attempt to make sense of things.

  But this…

  This was Grace… gone. This was Jimmy and Christopher dead. This was family. And Val felt as if she were balancing on a thin edge. One touc
h or kind word would plunge her into a morass of grief and hopelessness she could never climb out of. Exhaustion she would never shake.

  Leaving Kasdorf, Val trudged back out of the woods, Lund beside her. She could feel him eyeing her, sizing up how she was feeling, what she was thinking, and yet he didn’t speak. As if he could sense her struggle. As if he was going through the same struggle himself. As if he understood.

  And of course, he did.

  There were things Val had to do. Calls to make. Details to handle. Val started with Oneida, filling the dispatcher in on what had happened.

  Oneida said nothing for several seconds. When she finally answered, her voice was strong and sure. “We’ve got this, Chief. Did you find anything else?”

  Val swallowed into an aching throat and pushed on. “Kasdorf said Hess was driving an ambulance. Green or orange or red with a zigzag pattern on the side. He’s coming in to see if we can narrow that description down.”

  “I’ll pull up some pics. In my free time, I checked to see if any ambulances had been stolen. Nothing so far, but I’ll keep looking.”

  Val had barely been able to keep her head above water, and Oneida was doing the jobs of three people.

  “Hess doesn’t stand a chance, Chief. Not with you and me both gunning for him.”

  “Thanks, Oneida. What would I do without you?”

  “Let’s hope you never have to find out.”

  Val ended the call. So far, so good. She managed to get through a brief discussion with ERT Commander Vaughan. Then she climbed back into the passenger seat of her car, letting Lund take the wheel.

  “To the station?” he asked.

  Grace was unreachable. Brad was in the hands of Baker, Carruthers, and the hospital. But Christopher Edgar… right now she needed to think of him. “First my house.”

  Lund pulled out onto the road and headed back the way they’d come.

  Mercifully, he kept the silence for over a mile. The splash of tires through slush, patter of rain, and rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers were soothing, predictable, and Val longed to get lost in them. When Lund finally tilted his head to look at her, she physically flinched.

  “You okay?”

  “Okay?” The shaking started, vibrating in her chest, taking over her body. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to hold it together. “I screwed up, Lund. This whole thing is happening because I arrested Hess for something he didn’t do.”

  “This whole thing is happening because Hess is a psychopath.”

  “He promised to take away everything I love.” Her voice shook, barely under her control. “Everyone I love.”

  “So we stop him before he does.”

  “How?”

  “I’m hoping something will come to us.”

  At least he didn’t lie, didn’t pretend it would all be okay. “I hope you’re right.”

  Lund took Val’s hand in his.

  His fingers were warm, his skin rough, and she thought about the last time they’d made love. The night she’d told him about the MS. This morning, he’d asked her to marry him. He’d said he loved her. But he shouldn’t love her. And now all she could think about was losing him. Losing Grace. Losing everything. All because of a mistake she’d made years ago.

  She pulled her hand away and laid it in her lap.

  If Lund thought her move was strange, he had the sense not to say anything. Reaching the farm, he spoke to the deputies blocking off the road and drove between police cars flanking each side.

  The thick blanket of snow that had been covering everything this morning was fading, the traffic of first responders and the relentless rain turning her yard into a slushy mud pit. The drive was crammed with fire trucks, an ambulance, and an old hearse Harlan Runk used as his personal vehicle.

  “Coroner’s here,” Lund said, gesturing to the hearse. He pulled the car up behind the smaller fire truck. “You want me to run in and check on the horses?”

  The horses. She’d almost forgotten about the horses. And just the mention of them made her bite her lip, thinking of Grace. “That would be good, thanks.”

  “Maybe Oneida can call that horse guy friend of hers to take them or trailer them to Chicago?”

  “Good idea. Can you call? Mention it to her?”

  “Sure.”

  They got out of the car and approached the house, Lund eyeing her the way a nurse watches a patient whose next breath might be her last. Apparently convincing himself she’d make it, at least through the next few minutes, he left her when they reached the kitchen entrance and continued to the barn.

  Val stared at the door, trying to summon the energy to once again face the disaster inside. She could do this. She could handle herself, as long as she kept a distance. As soon as she started to think about what could happen or finding Edgar slumped against the wall—

  The kitchen door opened and Harlan Runk stepped out. “Oh, Chief. I’m so sorry.”

  Usually Val enjoyed seeing the coroner, even during the worst of times. As grizzly as Kasdorf yet a billion times sweeter, Harlan was friendly and quirky and always had something positive to say, even when he was elbows deep in a dead body. And when it came to Val, only he could manage to tiptoe the line between inappropriate crush and professional colleague.

  He was sweet. He was nice. And the last thing Val needed at the moment was sweet and nice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “No, of course you’re not okay, buttercup. I don’t know what I was thinking, asking that. I am so—”

  “Maybe we could just do our jobs, Harlan.” Her voice came out strangled, loud, and far more abrupt than she’d intended.

  “Right. Our jobs. Okay. Sorry, hon.”

  Val felt horrible. She should apologize. But all she could manage was one word. “Edgar?”

  “I’m almost ready to move him.”

  She mouthed the word thanks, then held up her index finger.

  “One minute? Sure, sweet cheeks. Anything you need.”

  Val escaped Harlan and scanned the area for her second-in-command, Sergeant Pete Olson.

  A typical Wisconsinite of Norwegian descent, Pete oozed about as much sympathy as a brick wall. Tall and emotionless, he was by-the-book and law-and-order and all those things cops were supposed to be.

  Val couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather be around right then.

  She found him at his SUV, talking on the phone. When he spotted Val, he motioned to his cell and mouthed the name Oneida.

  Apparently in Oneida’s spare time, she was keeping the entire investigation on track.

  “Crazy. Yeah, okay.” Pete ended the call and, not missing a beat, said, “We’ll get her back, Val.”

  Val nodded, the move starting to become robotic. “What’s crazy?”

  “The foster family that has Hess’s kid.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “With Hess? Not that I’ve heard. But the parents aren’t taking too kindly to being in protective custody.”

  “What would they rather be in? Body bags?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  Short, to-the-point answers. No emotion. Val was feeling stronger already. “Did someone suggest they get out of town?”

  “Yeah. But the husband is some sort of big shot. Says he can’t leave. They’re making do with one officer and some private security.”

  “Harlan is getting ready to move the body.”

  Olson stared at her.

  “What is it, Pete?”

  “The body, Val? That’s Chris Edgar we’re talking about. He’s one of us.”

  Legs weak, Val leaned heavily on her crutch. She should have known better. She could never distance herself from things that mattered. From people who mattered. To do that was to betray everything she was. “I don’t know how to do this, Pete.”

  A long time passed; finally Olson spoke. “I don’t think anyone knows, Chief. I guess we just feel our way. Do the best we can.” />
  Val nodded. And she knew what she needed to do. “Come with me.”

  She climbed the steps to the kitchen door, her legs so shaky she wasn’t certain she’d make it. When she pulled the door open, the thick odor of smoke assaulted her. Her gaze rested on the kitchen table, the newspaper, the coffee cups, just as she and Lund had left them this morning, right after he’d asked her to marry him.

  It seemed like another lifetime.

  Val stepped past the window, the vinyl blinds warped from the heat, sagging like cooked spaghetti. She opened the first cupboard and took out the folded American flag.

  On nice mornings, Grace would have raised it on the flagpole on her way to feed the horses. In weather like this, it remained folded into the traditional triangle.

  The flag at the station already flew at half-mast. Chris and Jimmy would both have a flag on their coffins, but there was no telling when proper funerals could be arranged. Val needed to do something now.

  She carried the flag upstairs, Olson behind her. When they reached her office, Harlan and his assistant were zipping up the body bag and raising the stretcher. Val didn’t move, just stood holding the flag, as reluctant to let it go as she was to face losing Edgar, losing Jimmy, losing Grace.

  “Val.”

  She looked up at Pete’s outstretched hands.

  “We’ll do it together.”

  Yes. Together. A family taking the first step in releasing one of its own.

  Val offered Pete one side of the flag. Fold by fold, they unfurled its length. They spread it open and draped it over the body bag.

  The walk down the stairs and through the ruined house felt like a funeral procession, slow, deliberate. They preceded the coffin outside, the smell of smoke clinging like a shadow. When they emerged, a stillness came over the crowd of responders. They stopped their work, gathering in a loose circle around the stretcher. Val spotted Lund in the crowd, her throat thickening at the sight of him. He gave her a solemn nod, and she turned to the stretcher where Edgar lay, the black body bag now zipped tight and draped with the stars and stripes.