Out Of Control (11 page)

With
a sigh, she stuck the empty soda bottle in the recycle container, pulled out a
chair, and sat at the dining room table. It was time to stop thinking about Cole
Landry and the unsettling way he made her feel. She had more important things
to do, like analyzing the information she’d gathered so far.

Maybe
she’d find the answers she so desperately sought, and in discovering them, she’d
turn into the real human being she’d always wanted to be. A woman who didn’t
suffer from an endless string of nightmares. One who suddenly really wanted to
find out if Cole Landry could be more to her than just the resident sheriff of
Salado County.

****

Cole
clenched his fists on the steering wheel as he drove along the highway heading
home, the memory of the kiss still sharp and vivid. He could still feel the
silken softness of her honey-blonde hair beneath his hands. Worse than that,
the dream was still so clear in his mind, the image of her naked body playing
hell with his testosterone level. The vein in his neck throbbed, and his cock
was trying to break free of its restraint in his jeans. He should wear a sign
that said “Stupid.” He should…what? Apologize? Damn it, he already had, but he
wanted to do it again anyway. And more.

He
was still about three miles from home when his radio crackled to life. He keyed
the mic and lifted it to his mouth.

“Landry.”

“Sheriff,
this is Grace.” Grace Hathaway had been working night dispatch since long
before Cole became sheriff. There was little she couldn’t handle, but tonight
her voice had an edge to it. “We’ve got some trouble.”

Cole
sighed. “Now what? Howdy McMann picking a fight in the Raccoon Saloon again?
Frank Nolan’s cattle breaking through the fence to the Silver Spur?”

Just
what he wanted tonight. But Grace’s next words put every part of his brain on
alert.

“I
think this takes precedence over Howdy or the cattle. We’ve got a DB in High
Ridge Park.”

Dead
body.

A
sour taste rose up from Cole’s stomach. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d
had a body in High Ridge. There certainly hadn’t been one since he’d taken
office.

“Identified?”
he asked.

“It’s
Leanne Pritchard.” Grace’s voice was tight, laced with a mixture of sadness and
anger. “Cole, it looks as if she was beaten and raped before she was killed.”

“Shit.”
Bile rose up in his mouth, sudden and unbidden.

Leanne
Pritchard was just sixteen years old, with her entire life ahead of her. She
was a sweet, friendly girl who loved life. Who the hell could do something like
this to someone like her?

“Who’s
on the spot?” he asked.

“Mickey
Garcia and Andi Lowell.”

Cole
relaxed a fraction. Mickey and Andi were pros. They wouldn’t panic like some of
his rookies might. They could handle whatever came up until he got there.

“All
right, Grace. Get the coroner and the crime scene folks down there. I’m on the
way.”

“Already
done,” she told him. “Call back when you’re on site.”

Cole
thanked God Grace was an old, experienced hand who’d seen just about
everything. Including the gruesome attacks on the children Dana Moretti was
determined to write about. Grace would keep her head no matter what. But she
and Leanne’s mother were good friends, so this was personal to her and he knew
it.

Hell,
what wasn’t personal in a town of five thousand souls?

Chapter
Eleven

The
scene, not more than a quarter mile from the park’s entrance gate, was easy to
spot from the road, but only because of the portable spotlights. Everything
seemed to be located within a thick copse of trees. When Cole pulled his truck
into the park, he saw the coroner’s wagon parked to one side, the crime scene
van next to it, and two cruisers pulled in at an angle to them. Yellow crime
scene tape had been strung around the entire area.

Off
to the left, beyond the taped off area, a group of teenagers crowded against a
large supercab pickup. Partygoers. He was forever chasing kids out of the park.
Now one of them had gone and gotten herself killed.

The
girls were jumbled against each other, crying, and the boys were doing their
teenage best to both comfort them and look invisible. Other cars had pulled up
beside the truck and adults with worried faces strained to see what was
happening.

He
spotted the Pritchards huddled together against a tree, surrounded by some of
their friends. In a minute, he’d have to talk to them, an unpleasant burden
that always fell to the man in charge. He could feel their pain spreading
through the air. The loss of a child was one of the most difficult to deal
with. He ought to know.

Scanning
the area again, Cole saw his two deputies quietly keeping the crowd under
control. He climbed out of his truck and ducked under the tape, threaded his
way through the trees, and came up next to Andi and Mickey. His eyes were drawn
at once to the body of the young girl sprawled under the merciless glare of the
portable spotlights.

She
was lying in an open space in a small copse of trees, hidden from casual view.
Cole was struck by the awkward angle of her body, legs bent, arms flung to
either side of her head, as if someone had just dropped her carelessly in that
spot. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle, and the muscles of her face were
frozen in an expression of pain and fear. She still wore her blouse and her
sandals, but Cole saw her shorts lying beside her, a pile of shredded material.

Nita
Sanchez, the coroner, was working with the body. Having attended to the most
necessary areas first, she’d tactfully covered the exposed area with a
protective sheet. Bad enough for him to have to see this. He didn’t want the
parents having this image stuck in their heads.

“Got
anything for me yet, Nita?”

She
looked up as he moved closer, rage flashing in her eyes. “You mean besides the
fact that she was brutally raped?” She shook her head. “It’s a mess, Cole. You
can tell she fought like a tiger. This didn’t go down easy. She’s got scratches
and scrapes on her thighs and a fair amount of blood.” Her hands tightened
involuntarily. “It’s obvious she was a virgin.”

The
coroner lifted the small canvas sheet to let the sheriff see the blood smeared
on Leanne’s thighs. When she gently rolled Leanne’s body to the side, she
exposed more blood between the cheeks of her buttocks, a sign of more damage to
the young body. The surrounding area and her lower back were also covered in
little marks which, if he had to guess, looked like pinch marks.

He
scrubbed a hand down his face, whether to erase the images from his mind or to
give himself time to think, he couldn’t say. “Shit. Anything else?”

“I
can tell you she was strangled, her neck was broken, and her mouth was taped
shut.” She drew a line around the girl’s lips with a gloved finger. “See the
lines where the tape was, the reddening of the skin where it was ripped off
post mortem?”

“Damn.
I hate knowing we’ve got some kind of monster out there.”

“Don’t
we all?” Nita’s sigh was heavy with grief.

He
scrubbed a hand against his cheek. “Yeah, well, the sooner you get the post
done the better. You know that.”

“I’ll
get her back to Drowdy’s as quick as I can and get to work.”

Elvin
Drowdy owned the largest funeral home in the county. Because there was so
little crime requiring a morgue, he had set aside a space in his prep room for
the coroner to work when necessary, which until tonight she’d only used for
accident victims.

Cole
moved away to let her get on with her job, backing up to where his lead
deputies stood. Andi looked up at Cole as soon as she sensed his presence.

“She
wasn’t killed here,” the deputy told him. “The ground isn’t disturbed anywhere
and she was arranged too carefully.”

Arranged?
He’d thought she looked dumped. Could be either, he supposed. It wasn’t like he’d
spent a lot of time looking at murder scenes. War was different, that was
survival. This, this was just sick.

Unexpectedly,
he felt bile rise in his throat and had to fight the urge to lose the contents
of his stomach. “Do any of those kids have an idea what happened?”

Andi
shook her head. “They were having a little after hours picnic here…”

“Which
they know is against the rules,” Mickey pointed out.

“Yeah,
yeah, yeah. But you and I did it,” she reminded him. “Hell, every kid in High
Ridge has done it. That gate at the entrance is a joke.”

“All
right,” Cole broke in. “Details please.”

Andi
blew out a breath. “They were running low on soft drinks. No beer, everyone’s
under age and they know what happens if you catch them. Anyway, Leanne had
driven here in her truck so she volunteered to go to the Supermart and get
supplies.”

“No
one saw her come back.” Mickey picked up the thread. “They were all over at the
opposite side of the park, away from the road. But after a while, they got
worried about her. When she didn’t answer her cell, they decided to fan out and
start looking. See if maybe she was playing some weird game with them. You
know, the way teenagers take it into their heads to do. When they got to this
spot, two of the kids found her and yelled for the others. Someone called us on
their cell.”

“Jesus.”
Cole swiped his hand over his hair. “What a thing for them to see. Okay. We
need to check and see if her truck’s still at the Supermart parking lot. If
not, we need to know where it is. And why she left it. Then we need it swept
for evidence. Maybe it will give us an idea of where she might have been taken.
I don’t think we need both deputies on crowd control. Mickey, go tell one of
them to get going.”

Mickey
pulled one of the deputies aside, gesturing and giving him orders before
rejoining Andi and Cole. “I can’t remember the last time we had a violent crime
in Salado,” he commented, anger scoring lines in his face. “Hell, there’re only
twenty-five thousand damn people in the whole county.”

“The
last time we had anything,” Andi pointed out, “was twenty-five years ago.
Remember those two years we had that pedophile running amuck? You were visiting
summers at your aunt and uncle’s ranch, remember?”

Cole
felt his stomach cramp. He’d been so young then, but details had stuck with
him. Impossible not to. Surely this wouldn’t turn out to be the first of a
series, like the pedophile killer. That’s all he’d need, with Dana Moretti
kicking up dust on the old cases and now, maybe, lured by this new one. How bad
could his luck get?

“Cole?”
Andi prodded him. “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that Dana Moretti shows up asking
questions about the pedophile cases and then this happens? You don’t think
there’s a connection, do you? Maybe she rattled someone’s cage?”

Colt
shook his head, pushing back the dread clawing at his throat. No way did he
want to think Andi’s off the wall question had any real credence to it. “I don’t
see how one has anything to do with the other. For one thing, this girl’s too
old for our last killer. For another, he’s long gone from this area. If we’re
lucky, this will be a one-time thing. We’ll catch the guy and that will be the
end of it.”

Mickey
took off his hat, wiped his forehead on his arm, and clapped his hat back on
his head. “Jesus, this will make waves all the way to San Antonio.”

Cole’s
lips thinned. “Yeah, we can expect a full court press from the media once they
get hold of this. Everything’s so much more immediate today than it used to be.
Let’s keep a lid on it as long as we can. Pass the word.” He narrowed his eyes
at the two people in front of him. “When that happens, no one—and I mean not
one person
—
talks to the press except me. Okay, then. I’m calling a
meeting first thing in the morning. Make sure everyone knows that. But I’ll
meet you two back in my office when you’re done here.” He sighed. “I guess I’d
better go speak to the parents.

****

Hidden
in the trees at the top of a hill, he had a good view of the action. The
spotlights the sheriff’s deputies had rigged lit up the place like it was high
noon. The coroner was still kneeling by the body, but he could see they’d
covered her with a sheet.

Pity.
He did so enjoy looking at her, even in death. She’d been such a luscious
armful. Even when she’d come awake and tried to fight him. He’d loved the look
of fear he created, the terror, the knowledge that things were beyond her
control. That had always been part of the excitement, seeing the knowledge of
their impending death in their eyes. His little flowers had looked so
beautiful. And this little plum, she’d been easy pickings.

Oh,
how grateful she’d been at his offer to rescue her from her little dilemma.
Coaxing her into his truck had taken little effort on his part. Why not? He was
a trustworthy soul. Everyone knew that about him.

She’d
been a feisty one, but he’d taken the wind out of her sails easily enough. The
pain he inflicted was so satisfying, keeping him in a constant state of
arousal.