All the Beautiful Brides (10 page)

“Yeah, but this was different.” He yawned. “This woman was dressed in a wedding gown.”

Despite her racing thoughts, Carol tried to keep her voice even. “That’s strange.”

“Actually that’s not the weird part.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t engaged.”

Carol’s heart hammered. This was the angle she needed.

The details that would make it a front-page story.

He surveyed the area around the falls where he’d left Gwyneth.

That federal agent was probing around, asking questions. He’d even been to Moose’s Coffee looking for him.

He’d almost bumped into him at the door, but managed to duck into a booth without being noticed. Then he’d heard the Fed talking about the body.

He had to be more careful.

Worried they might post someone in these woods to watch for him, he searched the shadows of the thornbush. The sound of birds fluttering toward it echoed in the silence.

But he didn’t see anyone now, so he gently laid Constance at the base of the falls, then carefully placed a stone beneath her head as a pillow. He smoothed the lacy wedding dress, then straightened the garter so the bow was centered on her pale, thin neck.

The white gown fanned out around her like angel wings in the snow.

If only she’d been the one . . .

Tears had dried on her cheeks, and the crisp air swirled around her face and caught a strand of her newly chopped hair across her forehead. He brushed it back gently.

She had been a fighter. And a crier. All those tears as she’d begged him to let her go.

But what was she worth to any man if she couldn’t make a decent wife?

Her porcelain skin looked a bluish color now. Her eyes frozen in death.

He crossed her hands on her chest, then painted her lips a beautiful red like the roses she would have carried if they had married.

The one she’d bitten down on protruded from her mouth now, macabre and ugly, in stark contrast to her beauty.

“Rest in peace,” he whispered as he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “No more crying or pain now, Constance. Dead girls don’t cry.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Cal stared at the morning newspaper, furious.

A Bride Killer in Graveyard Falls

By Carol Little

Local police in the small town of Graveyard Falls and FBI agent Cal Coulter have not yet solved the recent murder of twenty-five-year-old Gwyneth Toyton, whose body was found at the base of the falls.

Sources have revealed that in addition to the location where the body was discovered, there is another significant similarity to the infamous Thorn Ripper case from thirty years ago—the victim was found with a rose stem in her throat.

Although the victim was not engaged, she was wearing a bridal gown. So far, the police have not determined the Bride Killer’s motive, but women are urged to be cautious until the homicide is solved.

Anyone with information regarding the case should call the Graveyard Falls police department or the FBI.

Cal shot up from his chair with a curse. Dammit to hell, how had that reporter found out about the rose stem and wedding gown? Worse, if they were dealing with a serial killer, Carol Little had just fed his ego by giving him a name.

Cal had specifically withheld details from the public for interrogation purposes and to weed out false confessions.

He snatched the paper and strode outside to his SUV, started the engine, and drove around the mountain to the town square, then parked at the sheriff’s office. Early-morning traffic was minimal, although Cocoa’s Caf
é
was packed with the breakfast crowd and a school bus chugged by.

He clutched the paper in his hands and rushed into the office. Deputy Kimball was pouring himself a cup of coffee from the side counter, where a box of doughnuts sat. He looked up at Cal with blurry eyes.

Cal slammed the door and the deputy winced.

“Hey, man, not so loud.” The deputy rubbed his forehead and sank into the desk chair.

“What’s wrong?” Cal’s anger mounted at the sight of the bleary-eyed cop. “Are you hungover?”

“Yeah, if you must know, I am,” Deputy Kimball muttered. “What’s it to you?”

Cal shoved the paper on the desk in front of Kimball. “Do you know anything about this?”

Kimball slurped his coffee, blinked several times, then seemed to focus on the article. His eyes widened in distress. “Shit.”

“You leaked that information?” Cal asked, not bothering to disguise his fury.

Panic streaked Deputy Kimball’s face. “I . . . don’t know. I mean . . . maybe.”

Cal tapped the paper, indicating the woman’s name. “Do you know this woman Carol Little?”

Kimball’s face went ashen. “Fuck. She . . . set me up.”

Cal silently counted to ten to keep from jerking the idiot by the collar. “What do you mean, she set you up?”

“I went to Blues and Brews last night to unwind and had a couple of drinks.”

“Let me guess,” Cal said when Kimball hesitated. “She joined you for some drinks, then you slept with her.”

“I told her I didn’t do interviews,” Kimball argued. “But then I guess . . . maybe I said something when I was half-asleep.”

“Do you realize you could have just blown the case?” Cal said. “The rose stem and the bridal gown were details I wanted withheld to weed out false confessions. Now that it’s public knowledge, we may get a string of calls claiming to be the killer. And there’s the chance of copycats.”

The deputy scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I—I screwed up.”

“Yeah, you did. Did you tell her about the victim’s hair being cut, too?”

“No,” the deputy said, although his voice lacked conviction.

Cal’s phone buzzed, and he checked the caller ID. Linnea Toyton. Now the shitstorm would begin.

He pressed Connect. “Agent Coulter.”

“Did you have to tell everyone about that wedding dress?” Linnea cried. “My phone has been ringing off the hook. And that blasted reporter is at the door demanding an interview!”

Cal gritted his teeth. “Don’t open the door. I’ll be right there. I need to talk to you anyway. I want you to go with me to your daughter’s apartment to see if anything is missing.”

“Fine, just get over here and stop this craziness. I don’t want my daughter’s death used to get publicity for some psycho lunatic.”

Cal jogged toward the door. “I’m on my way.”

As long as Anna had lived away from Graveyard Falls, she’d felt safe.

But two nights back in the town, back in the house where she’d grown up, back under her father’s thumb, and the nightmares had returned.

That story about the murdered girl hadn’t helped. In fact, she had déjà vu.

Remembering that she’d tucked her high school diary under the mattress of her bed, she dug it out, surprised but relieved it was still there. She’d worried her father had found it and destroyed it.

She ran her hand over the pale-pink cover and carried it to the kitchen to look at while she had coffee. These pages were filled with her innermost thoughts and dreams and pain. No matter how far she’d run, she’d carried the shame and fear and disgust with her.

Disgust for the boy she’d loved who’d turned out to be a killer.

Disgust with herself for loving him anyway.

How had she not seen what he was doing? What he was really like? The sheriff and press had asked her that a million times. She’d asked herself the same question for the past few years.

Aching for her lost innocence, she skimmed the diary entries.

Today I watched Johnny at football practice. Everyone on the team looks up to him. He’s the star quarterback. So good-looking with his bronzed skin and dark-brown hair. And his muscles. Lord, Daddy says it’s a sin to notice such things, but I can’t help it. That boy is built in a way that I can’t help but
lust after him.

Daddy says that’s wrong. That good girls don’t have carnal thoughts.

But I’m weak, and at night when I go to bed, I look at the ceiling and dream about him. I imagine him smiling at me. Kissing me. Wanting me to be his girlfriend.

Sometimes I close my eyes and I feel him touching me.

Only, Johnny is so popular he doesn’t even know who I am.

She flipped to another entry, four months later.

This is the best day. I can’t believe it! Johnny failed his geometry test, so Ms. Grover asked me to tutor him. I’m actually going to get to talk to Johnny!

A loud knock at the front door punctuated the silence, startling Anna. Who in the world could that be?

No one knew she was home. She’d intentionally planned it that way. And her father’s friends had dwindled after she’d become the center of the town’s gossip.

Her father’s footsteps echoed as he shuffled from his room. What little of his gray hair was left stood up in tufts, his robe was undone, his pajama bottoms sagged on his bony frame. He’d lost so much weight he was just a skeleton of the big, brawny man who’d raised her.

“Who the hell’s at the door?” he growled.

Anna shoved the diary into her purse on the floor, jumping as the knock sounded again. “I don’t know.”

“If it’s that nasty Johnny boy, you tell him he ain’t welcome here.”

Pain wrenched her heart as anger surged inside her. Her father’s dementia grew worse every day. Sometimes he could remember things that happened forty years ago but not her name or how to get to the grocery store.

“Dad,” she said calmly. “It’s not Johnny. You put him in prison, remember?”
And you ruined my life.

“Then get the damn door.”

Anna frowned, then picked a piece of lint off her sweatshirt, anxious to get rid of whoever it was. She’d had to come here to try to convince her father to go into an assisted-living home. God knows they couldn’t live together.

The knock came again, and she yanked the door open with a scowl. A thin, attractive woman about her age dressed in a suit stood at the door, the wind whipping her bob around her face.

“Hi, my name is Carol Little. I’m looking for Sheriff Buckley. Are you his daughter?”

Panic shot through Anna, resurrecting memories of the newspapers that had plastered her name across the South.

“I’m a reporter—”

“I know who you are, but my father isn’t well. He can’t help you.”

Carol pushed at the door, trying to shoulder her way in. “Then I’ll talk to you. You were involved with Johnny Pike years ago, weren’t you?”

Sweat broke out on Anna’s neck. “Go away and leave us alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Fighting tears and paranoia, she slammed the door in the woman’s face.

A knock came a second later. “I said go away,” Anna shouted. “If you don’t, I’ll have you arrested!”

She leaned against the door, trembling as she waited until the woman’s car disappeared out of sight.

She couldn’t go through this again. She didn’t know the girl who’d just been murdered, and Johnny wasn’t involved. He was in prison.

This time they had to leave her alone. She had her own secrets to protect.

Sheriff Buckley’s head throbbed as if the devil had lit it on fire. He paced his bedroom like it was an eight-by-eight cell.

Ever since Anna had come back, shoving pills down his throat and watching him like he was some sick, old demented man, he’d felt like he was losing his mind.

He’d mixed up names and places. Hell, he’d thought that Johnny Pike was at the door knocking.

A minute later, he’d remembered that he’d taken care of that boy a long time ago.

But something else nagged at his mind . . .

He walked into the bathroom and washed his face, but when he looked in the mirror, he didn’t even recognize himself. He needed a shave, his eyes looked bloodshot and red, and he had scratches on his cheek.

What the hell? How had he gotten those?

He dried his face with the towel, then tossed it down, but saw his clothes on the floor in a pile. His heart banged with fear.

He stooped down and examined his jeans and shirt. They were damp, covered in leaves, and thorns were stuck in his jeans.

Then he saw blood on the handkerchief he always carried.

His vision blurred, the room faded, and he was suddenly staring at woods.

Thick trees stood side by side like sentinels, the branches winding together like arms guarding the secrets inside.

Between the branches he saw the falls. The thornbush.

Twigs snapped as he stepped forward and inched his way to the falls. Someone was there.

A body.

Shit. The woman was lying on the ground in a wedding dress, the stem of a blood-red rose jammed down her throat, the rosebud on the ground beside her.

He staggered back against the wall as he remembered going to the falls the night before. He had stayed all night.

But he’d lost time somewhere in there.

Then he’d seen the dead girl’s body, and it had sent him back thirty years to when it had all started . . .

The roses the boys at high school used as an invitation to prom . . . just as he’d done with his wife, Lilith.

Just as the Thorn Ripper had . . .

Nausea choked him, but he grabbed his jacket and boots, then snuck out the door. He had to go back there now.

See if what he’d remembered was real.