The Morning After

  “I don’t care. Simone’s my friend.”

  “All the more reason!” he said sharply. Dropping his hand he looked skyward and ran stiff fingers through his hair. “Look, Nikki, please. You can’t be involved in this, not at this level. It could be dangerous. We’ll drop you off at the station. You’ll be safe there. And I’ll let you know the minute we find her.”

  “But—”

  “This is the best way for you to help. We’ll need a list of all of Simone Everly’s friends, family and acquaintances. Work friends, siblings, anyone you can think of who might have seen her or know where she is. You can call and ask if anyone’s heard from her, okay?”

  “You’re patronizing me,” she accused.

  “I’m just trying to keep you safe and play by the rules as much as possible.”

  Morrisette snorted at that. “We don’t have any time for mollycoddling. You do what he says or we take you home.”

  “That’s not an option.” Reed’s gaze fastened on Nikki’s. “Just go to the station. I promise, the minute I know anything, I’ll call. And as soon as we’re done with Chevalier, I’ll be back.” He squeezed her upper arm. “Work with me for once, okay?”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Neither do we,” Morrisette said.

  “Fine. I’ll go to the station.” Where I’ll go out of my mind waiting for news about Simone.

  “Good. We have to work fast.” Pointing at Morrisette, he added, “We need to contact everyone who was on that jury. Offer protection. See if anyone strange has contacted them, staked out their homes. Get the most recent picture of Chevalier that we have, print out a million copies, then fax one up to McFee and Baldwin in Dahlonega. Have one of them show it to the kid who fell down the cliff. He’s the only person we know who’s seen the killer’s face.”

  “You mean the only one who’s still alive,” Nikki whispered as she stared at her friend’s home with its cheery, pastel décor. Everything was neat. Tidy. In its place. Just the way Simone liked her life.

  “I meant he’s the only one we can talk to readily,” Reed said. “But I want a BOLF bulletin sent out throughout the state, maybe even farther. Every cop on the southeastern seaboard needs to be on the lookout for this fucker.”

  “Amen,” Morrisette agreed. “We need to find this sick bastard and shut him down. Now.”

  But Nikki had the feeling it was too late. Too many hours had passed. What were the chances that Simone was still alive? She picked up Mikado again and held him close. Hearing the little dog’s heart beating was some comfort. “I’m taking him with me,” she said, and for once, neither cop objected.

  It’s dark.

  And cold.

  So dark and cold and…I can’t breathe.

  And I hurt. Worse than I ever have in my life.

  She was floating, trying to wake up and not aware of anything other than the darkness and some awful smell that made her want to retch. She felt a dull ache all through her body and her arm…God, her arm hurt like hell. Her mind was so damned fuzzy and…and she couldn’t move, could barely breathe. She tried to turn over and her shoulder hit against something. Pain ripped down her arm. Had she hurt it? She couldn’t remember. She coughed. Tried to sit up.

  Bam! Her head thudded against something hard. What the hell was it and why couldn’t she drag in a breath to save her soul? And the stench…Her stomach quivered as the cobwebs in her mind were cleared away by panic.

  She suddenly realized why she couldn’t move, why she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Oh, God…oh, no…She felt the cold, rotting flesh against the back of her bare legs and buttocks and shoulders.

  She was in a coffin.

  With a dead person.

  Terror shrieked through her.

  She screamed as if being impaled. Pounded frantically on the sides and top of the coffin.

  It seemed to shrink around her, pressing against her, creating a space so small she could barely move.

  “No! Oh please, no! Help! Someone help!” She was crying and coughing, the fetid air burning in her lungs.

  The son of a bitch who had captured her was the damned Grave Robber! Why, oh, God, why? Within minutes, possibly seconds, she’d run out of air. “Let me out,” she yelled frantically, wailing and shrieking and pounding at the sides of the coffin with her good hand. She kicked. Hard. But the steel liner didn’t give, only clanged dully as intense pain rocketed up her ankle. Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no…Now she understood. Now she remembered jogging to the gym, thinking of the class, not sensing the evil that had been lurking, not realizing that the monster had set her up and tripped her.

  She’d seen his face as he’d wrestled her to the ground and thrust the needle into her arm. That’s when she’d recognized him, when she’d realized the depths of the evil she faced. Though he’d aged and his looks had altered, she knew who had done this to her.

  Fleetingly she remembered the trial. The testimony. The horrid pictures of the crime scene. The chilling murders of a woman and her children.

  Leroy Chevalier was an animal. He’d beaten Carol Legittel and her kids mercilessly. He’d raped them all, then forced them to have sex with each other, with their mother. There had been hospital records submitted at the trial, which only seemed to prove how sick and twisted he was. He’d deserved prison. Or hell. Or both.

  She’d known when she’d learned of his release that there would be trouble.

  But she hadn’t expected this.

  No, no, not this.

  “Help me, oh, God, help me,” she screamed, her mind running in a crazy, wild kaleidoscope of jagged images. Torturing her while the feel of rotting flesh made her skin crawl. She had to get out. Had to!

  Surely someone would hear her.

  Certainly someone would come to her rescue.

  “You have to do it yourself!” she said aloud, or was it the other person in the grave with her. Oh, God, did she feel him moving beneath her? Touching her. Running a bony, rotten finger up her spine.

  Her shriek was the keening wail of an inmate in an asylum, the desperate, psychotic howl of a person whose mind was jagged and torn.

  Think, Simone…think. Don’t lose it. As bad as the air was, it still existed and she thought—oh, Jesus, was she imagining it—that there was the hint of fresh oxygen mingling with the sour, malodorous stench of decay. Again, she thought she felt something move—a worm or beetle that had bored into the coffin, or the ghost of whoever it was she was entombed with, touching her, breathing against the back of her neck?

  She screamed and clawed, swearing and crying, feeling claustrophobia grip her, knowing her mind was fragmenting. Hold on, for God’s sake hold on…someone will save you…or will they?

  If she ever got out of here alive, she’d kill the bastard with her bare hands.

  You’ll never get out, Simone…

  Did someone say that? Or was it her own terrorized mind.

  You’re going to suffer the same fate as the others and die slowly and miserably.

  She heard it then, the spray and rattle of dirt and pebbles falling upon the lid of the coffin. She wasn’t yet buried. There was a chance.

  “Let me out!” Again she pounded, her wrist throbbing, panic spurring her. “Please, please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone, oh, please, don’t do this!”

  More clattering as another scoop of dirt rained upon her tomb. But if she wasn’t yet buried, someone besides the sick bastard might hear her. She screamed wildly, kicking, pounding, scraping, pleading. “Help me! Oh, God, someone, help me!” But still the dirt thudded above her and the smell of fresh air seemed to fade with each mind-dulling shovelful. He was going to kill her slowly. There was no escape.

  The darkness seemed more complete. The air so thin it burned. The stench unbearable and the corpse beneath her seemed to move…to touch her in the most unimaginable places.

  That was impossible, she thought for a fleeting second, but that bit of sanity was soon destroyed as the voice in her mind jeered ba
ck at her. You’re doomed, Simone. Just like the others.

  Her shrieks were muffled, her pleadings muted as he filled the yawning hole, but The Survivor was hearing Simone Everly’s pitiful cries in stereo, not only listening to her screams from the coffin itself, but also hearing very clearly her every breath from the earpiece he’d lodged in one ear. He couldn’t resist. Though it would have been safer to fill the hole and listen to her recorded cries later, the temptation to hear her as she was actually experiencing her fate was too great. Usually his victims didn’t awaken until he was well away from the scene, but Simone Everly had been stronger than he’d anticipated and the drug he’d used to control her had worn off early.

  Which was just as well, he thought as he scooped the damp earth. There was something purely sensual about knowing she was just below him, lying in the coffin beneath a few inches of earth, pleading with him to free her. Oh, she would plead and cry and offer him sexual favors, but even the thought of actually fucking her wasn’t as thrilling as what he was experiencing now, the adrenaline rush of hearing her plead and gasp and cry.

  A soft rain was falling, offering a veil for his actions should anyone climb the locked gates of the cemetery. He was alone, aside for a creature or two that scuttled through the foliage. If he looked through his night-vision goggles, he saw them, raccoons, skunks and opossums, huddled beneath the shrubs on the edge of the graveyard, peering at him with wide suspicious eyes.

  Go ahead and watch, he thought of the furry witnesses to his crime. He was sweating as he threw the dirt into the grave, her voice fading in the damp cloud-covered night. He had to work fast, just in case some teenagers or vagrants showed up, but for now, they were alone.

  He and Simone.

  She was crying now, babbling incoherently, shrieking occasionally, prattling on about someone touching her and breathing on her—as if she were in the coffin with a ghost.

  Man, she was really losing it.

  Which was perfect.

  Let her fears drive her crazy in the last few minutes of her life, let her think that there is no way out, that no matter how hard she struggles, pleads and fights, she’s doomed.

  See how it feels, you rich bitch.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I tell you, the creep hasn’t been around for a couple of days.” Dan Oliver, the manager of Chevalier’s apartment building, was more than eager to let them inside. He looked to be around fifty and wore the bitter, I’ve-never-caught-a-break-in-my-life expression of a man who had lost his youthful dreams years before. Beneath the brim of a dirty baseball cap, his small eyes glittered in a face that carried too much flesh, and he’d barely cast a glance at the search warrant Reed and Morrisette had managed to procure. It seemed that Danny Boy had been anticipating them as he led them down a crumbling brick path and down a few steps to a basement. The apartment was nearly subterranean, a small space that had obviously been the work of a handyman hoping to make some extra bucks by taking in a tenant.

  “Does he have a job? Keep regular hours?” Reed asked, though he knew the answer.

  “Yeah, he’s got a job. If you can call it that. Over at the video store. The guy’s a perv, man, he’s probably just been watching porn flicks all day. His hours vary, I think, but I don’t keep tabs on him. It’s not my job. That’s what the parole officer does, right?”

  “But you haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary?” Reed pressed.

  “He’s a fuckin’ murderer. Everything’s out of the ordinary.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Morrisette said as the door opened. Oliver stood outside and lit a cigarette while Reed and Morrisette entered what was little more than a tomb with dingy, cracked walls, bare wires and two tiny windows that were not only covered with dirt, but barred. No light could possibly reach the interior where a patchwork of carpet was matted and stained and a recliner held together with duct tape sat in front of a television with drooping rabbit ears adorned with bits of aluminum foil. The TV sat upon a battered bookcase that housed old record albums, though no phonograph was in sight.

  “Cozy,” Morrisette muttered under her breath as she looked at the kitchenette—which consisted of a hot plate and half-refrigerator. A toilet was in the closet. “Right out of the pages of House Beautiful.”

  “He’s only been out a little while. Hasn’t had time to consult with a decorator,” Reed replied as he studied LeRoy Chevalier’s bed, an army cot pushed into a corner and covered by a sleeping bag. Above the cot was the only decoration in the entire apartment—a picture of the Virgin Mary, beatifically looking down, as if at Chevalier’s bed. Though fully dressed, her heart was visible, her expression kind. Loving.

  “So what did he do? Hack up another family?” Oliver asked, then sucked hard on his cigarette.

  “We just want to talk to him.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did he have any visitors?”

  “I don’t know. He keeps mostly to himself. Most of his buddies are in the big house.”

  “No phone?” Reed asked, looking around. “No computer?”

  Oliver laughed so hard he started coughing. “He’s not exactly a high-tech kind of guy.”

  That much seemed true and The Grave Robber had contacted both he and Nikki through E-mail, had installed wireless microphones in the coffins, had used technology to his advantage.

  “Look at this.” Morrisette had donned a pair of gloves and pulled a scrapbook from the bookcase holding the record albums. She laid it on the recliner and began flipping through the plastic-encased pages. News clippings, now yellowed with age, had been clipped and pasted carefully in the scrapbook. “He’s obsessed with it.”

  “So where is he?” Reed said, and felt even more uncomfortable. Something was wrong here, something he didn’t understand. Unless Chevalier was a chameleon; unless he was faking them out with this hovel of a living area. Unless he was playing them for fools.

  Reed didn’t like it.

  He was missing something.

  Something important.

  Something that could cost Simone Everly her life.

  The police were closing in.

  The Survivor had heard the information on the police band. Could sense them getting closer, felt their collective hot breath on the back of his neck. They’d found the apartment, just as he’d expected. Just as he’d planned. He anticipated their next steps.

  Rounding a corner, he crossed the street and walked down the narrow alley where trash cans were piled and a suspicious cat glowered at him from the top of a fence. He found his truck parked in a public lot. In plain view. This time, rather than take a chance that his vehicle would be recognized, he’d dumped a drugged Simone and his tools beneath the shrubbery at the grave site. He’d hidden his truck and returned to the cemetery later, before Simone had awoken, to finish his work. He found his keys and climbed into his truck. Satisfaction stole through him. He’d delivered his package; it was what he’d expected, what he’d wanted. He knew they’d soon figure out his clues. Unless they were complete morons. But he’d fooled them again. All that nonsense with the number twelve was just to whet their appetites, point them in the right direction but keep them blind to his real target.

  He drove the speed limit, not encountering any trouble, and parked in the alley. Certain he hadn’t been followed, that no one suspected where he’d hidden his lair, he hurried down the steps and slipped into the room where he found his solitude. His peace.

  Glancing at the pile of Simone Everly’s clothes, he smiled. Remembered undressing her. She’d been unconscious, of course, while he’d pulled off her warm-up suit and shorts and T-shirt beneath. He’d taken off her jog bra, quietly fondling a breast. God, it had been beautiful with its fading tan lines indicating she’d sunbathed in a small bikini. On the whitest part of her skin, in sharp contrast, were her nipples. Dark. Round. Perfect. He couldn’t stop himself from caressing them and then he’d pulled off her jogging shorts and found the treasure.

  A scarlet thong.

&
nbsp; Barely covering any part of her and wedged up into her ass to show off the tight, round cheeks. He’d thought about biting her on the rump, of mounting her from behind, of forcing his hard cock deep into her, but he’d restrained himself. His hands had quivered as he’d removed the red piece of nothing she’d thought were panties. He’d smelled it and touched it with his tongue while he’d taken the time to get himself off. And then he’d put the thong away, hog-tied Simone and wrapped her into a tarp with breathing holes. He’d been careful to gag her just in case she’d woken up during the ride or in the half hour he’d had to leave her hidden in the dense foliage surrounding the cemetery.

  Then, he’d hauled her to her final resting place.

  Quickly, he sat down and listened to the tape of her screams, heard her beg for mercy and felt her terror. Perfect, he thought, listening to the sounds over and over. He indulged himself, walked to the bureau, rubbed the bloodstains on the surface, then reached into the drawer where his keepsakes waited. Silk and lace slid through his fingers.

  He got hard.

  Real hard.

  Nikki was slowly going out of her mind. She’d heard nothing. It had been hours and Nikki was tired as she sat at the barren desk she’d been assigned at the police station. After whining for an hour, Mikado had curled into a ball at Nikki’s feet while she tried to reach Simone’s family and friends. A tall, efficient-looking officer named Willie Armstrong was seated near enough to her that she wondered if he’d been told to “baby-sit” her and keep her out of trouble. Such was her reputation, she supposed, though she didn’t care as she watched the hands of the clock tick off the minutes and hours with no word from Reed.

  What had they found at Chevalier’s apartment? Surely, if he and Detective Morrisette had found Simone they would have called.

  No such luck.

  Her heart heavy with fear, her brain creating mind-numbing scenarios of sheer horror for her friend, she’d watched the police department in action from the inside. Even though it was the dead of night, the crew that was working took care of the BOLF bulletin and had copies of LeRoy Chevalier’s likeness distributed. Nikki had called all of the friends and family of Simone that she could reach. Unfortunately her parents weren’t home, but maybe that was for the best. Why worry them unnecessarily?