The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (19 page)

It felt like hours since her captor had been in the same room with her, and strangely, Reyna felt the absence in a way she didn’t think she’d expect. With her captor with her, she knew that whatever happened would happen and then it would be over with and that she wasn’t alone, but with her gone, she felt the passage of time as if it were a hot blade that was slowly being pressed into her unwilling flesh.

Before the deranged woman left her, she’d turned off the oxygen flow into the coffin and pumped some strange gas into it that depleted the available air that she had to breathe making her lungs burn with the need to inhale until she was forced to inhale and then choke and sputter until she nearly suffocated. When the woman found it within her power to turn the oxygen back on, Reyna knew that she had been very close to dying. Even after the woman had left, for nearly an hour, she’d struggled with the pain in her chest until she thought that clawing out her lungs
through her rib cage was the only solution. She remembered begging the woman to tell her why she was doing this to her and the only answer she’d gotten had been the return of the foul gas.

Reyna closed her eyes and let the darkness of the coffin coat her. She had tried to be strong, tried to keep reminding herself that Louis was going to find her and rescue her, but she knew in her soul that strength had a limit. Whoever it was that had her, meant to kill her eventually, and eventually, she knew that she’d allow it.

To pass the time, since it had decided to pass regardless of what she thought it should do or how she perceived it, Reyna thought of Louis and how it came to be that she was in love with him. The memories offered her a way to mentally escape her cage, and for short instances, she could really believe that she was with him and experiencing for the first time what it was like to truly be in the presence of the one person in the world that you were meant to be with.

“I’m Louis. You’re Reyna right? Just so I don’t forget
later after you’ve slapped me, I’d like to let you know how beautiful you are.”

The blush that covered her cheek bones made her face feel hot and she had a difficult time looking Louis Kale directly in the eyes. The handful of times that she’d seen him, she’d always had the uncontrollable urge to stare at him, to admire how handsome he was. She’d also had the thought that it was a shame that he had no one to love him.

“Why do you think I’ll slap you?”

“Because if he doesn’t try something stupid at the party, he’s bound to at some point.”

She smiled at Abigail, her friend for over a decade, and chuckled as she winked at Louis and put her arm around her. Abigail added, “Don’t you go trying to break Reyna’s heart, Louis. She’ll surprise you every time, and if you go after her, you end up fall for her. I promise you.”

Reyna closed her eyes at the memory. She’d seen Louis’ face, seen him smile softly at her, his stormy eyes bright but calm like a pond, and in that one
moment, her heart blossomed and she’d fallen for him. Louis had needed a woman to show him what love was, and she’d needed a man that would hold her heart in his hands and consider death before breaking it.

“Please, hurry. Find me, Louis.”
 

********
 

Louis had stared at his phone for a full five minutes before he moved his thumb over the screen and put his finger to work pressing the buttons to dial Reyna’s number. Before he could press the call button, his phone started to vibrate in his hand, and not even bothering to look at the incoming number, he answered.

“Louis? Are you there Louis?”

His brows furrowed. On the other end of the line, surprisingly enough was Rebecca. “How in the hell did you get my number, and what in the hell are you doing calling it?”

“You gave it to me that night at the bar, or don’t you remember? Never mind that.  Look, I think I have a lead for you, but you’ll have to come alone. I know I’m supposed to have the day off, but I could tell how much Reyna means to you, so I did some investigating on my own.”

“Look
”

“If you want to find Reyna, then you’ll come to where I am. I’m at my house.” Rebecca didn’t offer to explain further since she clicked her receiver and ended the conversation.

“What the hell?”

Not thinking that he was supposed to be shirking Jon and escaping through the window in the bathroom like a scene from a movie, he opened the door and walked into the hall and literally bumped into Jon who grunted as his foot was stepped on.

“Damn it man, come on. Get off.”

Louis scoffed. “What were you doing eavesdropping?”

“I was coming to check on you since you’ve been in there for almost half an hour. I had given you the benefit of the doubt, that you wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and ditch me, but then I remembered you’re my brother’s best friend and that if you’d learned anything from Travis that it would be how to ditch someone when you didn’t want them around.”

Louis sighed. “I had thought to get rid of you, since the search for Reyna is going about as fast as
a snail.”

“Who were you talking to?”

Louis shrugged and put his cell phone back in his pocket. “Rebecca believe it or not. She told me that she has a lead on Reyna, but that I had to come alone or some bullshit like that. I don’t understand why we can’t go together.”

Jon folded his arms to his chest. “Why don’t we pretend then? I have those little wires the boys in Hadley use to go undercover. One of them was kind enough to send us a box of them to use the last time they were here. You could wear a wire, and then whatever Rebecca tells you, I’ll know too.”

Louis ran a hand through his hair. “What in the hell is going on, Jon? I know Collie is a small town, but is it me, or does it seem like no one cares if Reyna dies? Do the Feds even believe me?” He looked at his feet. “Are they just jerking me around?”

Jon, for the first time since Louis met him in middle school when Travis first invited him to hang out at his place, looked him in the eyes and nodded his head gravely. “I’m sorry Louis, but they think you’re suffering from some kind of mental distress. Reyna called into work and told them that she’d left town,
and that she was upset and needed the time off. The girl she works with swears it was Reyna on the line.

“I’ve known you for a long time, buddy, but you’ve never acted this way. You’ve never lost your temper, not once in the fifteen years I’ve known you. If you ask me honestly, Louis I think Reyna left you. I think she’s where she told you she would be and that you connecting Reyna’s leaving to the killer is your way of coping with it.”

If it had been anyone else, anyone else at all, Louis would have belted the person who said that to them and told them where they could get bent. But this was Jon, a man he respected and trusted and the words coming out of his mouth basically calling him crazy not only hurt him, it made him want to believe them. If Reyna was just gone and not kidnapped, then she wasn’t in danger and she wasn’t dead.

“I need some air man, seriously. Just let me alone in the house for a while and let me gather my thoughts. Maybe it is like you said, and if it is, I need a minute to absorb it, okay? I’m not okay right now.”

Jon placed his hand on Louis’ shoulder. “I’m sorry, I really am.” He then lifted his hand and walked to the end of the hallway and headed for the door.

“Yeah, brother, I am too.” Louis turned walked to the opposite end of the hall, and instead of going back into his room or the bathroom, or reconsidering and moving into his living room, he lifted the curtain to the large bay window at the end of the hall, lifted the sill and punched the screen until it caved and fell to the grass on the outside. “See you later, Jon.”
 

********
 

Getting anywhere in Collie took two things; one, the decision to go there, and two, the ability to walk from point A to point B. Rebecca’s place, Louis figured was more than a stone’s throw of a walk, though it took him less than twenty minutes to get there. He was certain, since he stayed off the roads as much as possible, that even after Jon probably figured out where he’d gone, that he’d have plenty of time to find out what his new partner had to say before he was carted back to jail for slipping his leash.

As he’d walked, he’d had a long time to think about his situation and about how he’d gotten to be where he was. He kept revisiting the last time he’d seen Travis, and picturing how haggard the man had looked even though he’d pretended the whole time to be happy about getting married and becoming a father. Even though Travis hadn’t told him what the real reason behind his leaving Collie was, he’d figured it had something to do with Abigail’s father. The whole situation was shady, including the man who’d tried to kill them both and the way Abigail’s father, the mayor of Collie had been acting.

In the wake of so much mess, Reyna had been there for him. At first it was just her presence that he’d needed; someone to talk to, someone to be around and joke with and just enjoy for the sake of enjoyment. But then, as time passed and Reyna became a fixture in his day to day life and happiness, their plutonic relationship received a passionate shove right into a full-blown love affair
, only the love part of the whole deal had taken him a long time to realize.

The first time she spent the night with him, Louis knew, was the last time he’d have the chance to be with a woman and not have some sense of emotion enter the picture. The way their bodies had entangled that first time, the impression that their movements and knowledge of each other was nothing if not natural and fated, ruined him for all other women. At least
, it was the understanding he had now. Reyna was his, and she was the only woman he’d ever want ever again.

As Louis got his first glimpse of Rebecca’s house, her car parked out front in her driveway between her manicured hedges, he had to chuckle at the irony
despite his ever-growing awareness of foreboding. Not only had he told Reyna he’d fallen in love with her, but the readiness to do anything he could to save her, to have her back in his arms was not only the most obvious course of action he could take, but the first step into coming to terms with the knowledge that his heart was planning to make her his wife. Louis Kale, settled down and content with just one woman. Talk about surreal.

If Rebecca was the key to saving Reyna, however the woman had managed to grasp a lead, he’d do what he had to do.

“I’m so glad you came,” Rebecca said as she wrapped her slender arms around Louis’ waist. He allowed her to have her three seconds of contact before he gripped her arms and pulled her away from him. He doubted highly that the woman understood that flirting with her, whoever brief had been his mistake and that he wanted nothing romantic from her.

“I’m not here for a social visit, Rebecca, so if you don’t mind let’s get down to the grit. What do you know?”

Rebecca frowned for an instant before she turned away and walked inside of her house, leaving the door open to make it obvious that her guest was to follow her. Louis, not understanding why the hell she just didn’t answer him, did just as she wanted him to, and once he was past the threshold, he shut her door behind him.

“I didn’t think you were going to be so abrupt, Louis. I
mean, you told me that you and Reyna were having problems, that she didn’t understand you. I even told you that she didn’t deserve you. Remember?

‘I don’t understand what the rush is to find her. I mean, with that guy in jail, she’s probably safe.”

Louis frowned. His understanding of Rebecca had taken a nosedive in all of a few seconds of her opening her mouth. How anyone could sound so callus and look the way she did astounded him. There wasn’t a shred of empathy in her lovely voice.

“Rebecca, I love her. No matter what she does or what she says, I love her. I’d go to the very hole Satan calls his own and pull her out before I’d leave her there alone. Now, tell me what you know. You’re wasting my time.” Louis hoped that his tone sounded the appropriate mix of irritated and desperate. So much of his time had already been wasted.

Rebecca moved further away from him and wandered into her kitchen, first passing by her dining table. This was the first time that he’d been in her home, and understandably since this was the first time that he’d had the reason to be here. As he took a look around the room and noted that her home was decorated in shades of pink and lace, he saw the dining table and his mouth fell open.

‘What the hell is this, Rebecca?” The dining table had prepared for supper, a candlelit dinner for two. For embellishment and to emphasize the intention, a single rose had been placed in the center of the table.

“Do you like it? It took me a while to put it all together; I’m such a bad cook. It’s why no one wants me. But you, you don’t care about things like that, right?”

Louis felt inches away from truly losing his temper. “Did Jon put you up to this? Are you like they are; are you keeping me here, on a wild goose chase? Reyna is missing, damn you. If you don’t have something to tell me, I’m leaving.”

Rebecca’s face flew into a kaleidoscope of emotions, none of them that appeared to be genuine before they landed on what appeared to be a facsimile of shock. She said, “No! Don’t leave! I swear, I know something important. I, I well…I just thought I could get you to eat something while I was at it.”

Was she on drugs? Was the whole town on drugs? Louis replied, “I don’t want to eat your damn food. I want to find Reyna. I don’t give a damn about you.”

Again, as only a few minutes before, his words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Rebecca, instead of responding to his not so subtle comment about disliking her, simply moved into her kitchen and picked up a bottle of already opened wine. She moved to her counter and poured the wine into two glasses, and once they were near to full she moved to the table and put one of the glasses on its surface while extending the other one out to Louis.

“Here, why don’t you have a
drink? I promise, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

Hoping to sound as angry as he was beginning to feel, Louis spat, “I don’t want a damn drink. I want to know what you know.”

“I know a lot of things, Louis. I know that you think you love Reyna, but in reality you don’t. I know that our night at the bar meant something to you, that the time we’ve spent together has meant something to you and that the person you’re really after is standing right in front of you.” Rebecca smiled. “I know that you’re here because you wanted to see me, that you want to be with me and only me and that we’re meant to be together. Isn’t that right?”

Rebecca didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she lifted the rose she’d place at the center of the dining table and twirled it in a semi-circle before poising the red petals to her pink lips. On the stem of the rose, Louis could see a wedding ring. A man’s wedding ring.

“I want you, Louis, just as much as you want me. I know you love me, so there’s no point in waiting is there? Marry me, Louis. Say you’ll marry me, and I’ll tell you where to find Reyna.”
 

********
 

Enclosed in her box, the world full of darkness and pain, Reyna could hear her captor talking to a man. At first, she didn’t recognize the voice of the newcomer and wondered what was going on, but then she’d heard her name flood out of the man’s excited lungs and knew without a doubt that Louis was just beyond
her confines, maybe even within inches of her. He’d shouted, said that he loved her and that he had to find her, but then the woman had told him that she’d only tell him where she was once he promised to marry her. Silence followed the ultimatum, and Reyna wondered if she’d heard anything at all.

Had she dreaming? Was this another one of her nightmares? She’d experienced so many of them since her imprisonment in the box, that telling reality from the experience of them was getting more and more difficult. She’d even dreamed that Louis had come, like a cowboy in a Western movie, and pulled her from her coffin, his warm arms embracing her and telling her that everything would be okay and that there was nothing to fear because he was there to protect her. But then, the woman had come and the dream had been dispelled, since as soon as the woman began to question her, her oxygen had once again been taken from her and the foul gas again forced into her lungs. It had been clear to her, that even though for a moment she’d been absolutely sure she’d been rescued, that the image of Louis had only been her dying mind’s way of comforting her. The pain of that knowledge had threatened to take her,
had nearly forced her to give up for the final time. If Louis was never going to come to her, never going to pluck her from this horrible place, then it was her only choice of action then to die right where she was. She almost prayed for the end.

How long had it been now, since she’d been entombed? Days, weeks, months? It was clear that time had left her to rot, that it no longer cared if she could sense its passing. Her faith had been depleted, so why not question Time itself? Was she already dead? Was this what hell was like? Heaven had no room for her, had punished her for some fault she hadn’t known she’d committed and then sent her straight to the fiery pits of the down below to suffer at the hands of this female assistant to Satan himself.

It was possible that she’d begun to lose her mind, that her experience in the box had begun to destroy not just her body, but her soul. From the moment she’d first been placed in this tight enclosure, the only kindness she’d received was oxygen; no food or water had been administered to her and after so long without either, she was so weak that even if the lid to her world was suddenly ripped off its diabolical hinges, that she wouldn’t have the strength to lift herself to freedom. Her captor had told her that water and food had been taken away from her because the ultimate goal was for her to die as slow as possible and also so she would piss and shit herself.

“Are you insane? What in the hell is this? I’d never love you, let alone touch you.” Silence followed this figment of her imagination and then, “So help me, I’ve never once hit a woman, but I swear I’ll destroy you if you don’t tell me where Reyna is. Are you the one who took her?”

Weakly, Reyna shouted yes in answer to her overactive fantasy, but she knew she was too weak for the Louis dream to hear. Her voice was that of a whisper, a faint rustle of clothing against skin, a heart breaking over and over in devastating agony. Yes! I’m here! I’m here!! Louis, I’m here!!
 

********
 

Louis watched as Rebecca continued to twirl her rose, to rub her first finger over the wedding ring she’d
placed on the stem. His harsh words had hit her ears; he’d could tell by the small twitches her mouth made when he refuted the strange fantasy she’d had of him. Was she in her right mind? Was he? It wouldn’t be that much of a strain for his brain to extend to come to the logical conclusion that he was still in his home, with Jon waiting for him outside as he had some sort of mental breakdown. Perhaps he’d hallucinated the call Rebecca had made to his cell phone as he’d stood in his bathroom. Maybe all this was, was an effort his mind was making to heal itself against the fact that he’d been trying to deny all along; the fact that Reyna wasn’t missing but that she didn’t love him and had left him. After all, the man he’d known half his life, a man he’d considered his brother just as much as he’d known he was a friend, believed it to be so.

“Louis, Louis, you must think of the choices you have. You won’t make it to the front door, and you won’t have the time to call anyone. If you don’t consider what you have standing right in front of you, then everything you’ve been trying to do will be nothing more than the biggest failure of your life.

“Would you really hurt me? I know you care about me; maybe you don’t love me as much as I love you, but we have all the time in the world for that. I can make you see that all you’ll ever need is what I can give you.” Rebecca paused, and again, she offered the glass of wine. “Drink this and you’ll see everything my way. If you don’t drink it, I’ll make sure Reyna dies.”