Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel)

Savage Art

A Chilling Suspense Novel

by

Danielle Girard

Award-winning Author

Published by
ePublishing Works!

www.epublishingworks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61417-251-2

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Please Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © Danielle Girard, 2000, 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Thank You.

For Claire.

May life be a long, gentle adventure.

Acknowledgments

For Mom and Dad, for teaching me to carve my own path. For Nicole, Tom & Steve, for sharing your talents and your friendship. And for Chris, for taking my hand and standing beside me, always.

~

No man is an island, and the creation of this book is no exception. Thank you to the very talented writers who sent me back to my computer when they knew something wasn't done correctly: Monica McLean, Sonia Rossney, Taylor Chase, Diana Dempsey, Joanne Barnes, Lisa Hughey, Deborah Benoit, Cathy Ensley, Janet Acampora, and Lydia Hester. Thank you to the experts who shared their knowledge with me at the drop of a hat: internist Dr. Donald Girard; forensic scientists George Schiro and Mark Goldman; and electrical expert Tom Warner. If I've excluded anyone, it's due to a weary brain and not a lack of appreciation. Any mistakes that remain mean that I didn't take good enough notes.

~

Finally, thank you to Helen Breitwieser for her incredible faith, her strong support and her light humor. And to Genny Ostertag, for seeing what we did and for making it into a book.

Prologue

April 1999

Crouched in the closet, he waited for the sounds of her arrival. Sweat pooled beneath the black gloves, but his face and neck were cool. The red light on the bedside clock read 11:47. She was never earlier than 11:36 and never later than 12:04. She would arrive momentarily. Anticipation ran like a blade across his skin, arousing each part of his anatomy.

From his pocket, he found the patch of pink satin he had cut from the first one's panties, and rubbed it across his lips. Nearly three months had passed since that first time. Almost five years since his mother and sister, but he didn't count them with the others.

For nearly five years, he'd been content, working in the morgue. Late at night, when he was there alone, he would do a bit of dissection, practice his skills. He was always sure to work on a victim who was headed out to a closed-casket funeral or to the crematorium so no one would wonder about his handiwork. It had been a satisfying experience.

And then the idiot manager had caught him with one of the cadavers, a young woman, and had fired him. He'd felt himself explode at that moment, the trigger firing. He'd gotten into his car and driven it so fast, he'd gone right off the road. It had been a momentary release, to be free and flying.