The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (8 page)

“You went around town, grief stricken because you couldn’t save your little boy, killing the women that came across your path. I knew you saw that chain-smoking irritating bimbo Amber every time you went to the grocery store, that you were friendly with her, and I thought she’d be the best person to get everyone’s attention with. I’d already murdered Heather and that fat weirdo sister of hers, knowing that since you’d already lived there, that someone would eventually think that you’d gone back to your roots and lost it with a pistol. How easy it was to shoot them in the chest! Like they wanted it!

“I left those messages for you to keep you busy and to keep you away from Willis long enough for me to lure him off by himself. He’d been trying to sleep with me since I started working there, and I’m sure that’s why he was kinder to you than he was to me. You slept with him, right? Sure you did. Killing him was like drinking a cup of coffee, good till the last drop.”

Cory tried to block out the things Fran was saying to her, but it found its way inside of her senses as her words had a roadmap. The kind of sick mind it took to conjure up something this elaborate must have been dreamt up from years of abuse by other people, that or some kind of psychotic break. Why Fran was so fixated on her, was anyone’s guess.

Cory looked to her right, thought she saw the baseball bat she’d leaned against the wall cattycorner to couch in a blind corner, but it was at least a few feet away from her and she probably wouldn’t have enough time to get to the bat and swing it before Fran could fire her gun. The psycho had proven that she was perfectly capable of shooting someone.

Fran walked over to where Willis was positioned, where the last drops of his blood were still making wet smacks against David’s tombstone. Cory felt tears blurring her vision, but she couldn’t force herself to take her eyes off of Fran.

“Do you know why I’m doing this? I bet you haven’t the slightest clue. People like you never think to understand the people beneath you.” Fran smacked the back of Willis’ head so that it rocked back and forth, the gaping maw of his wound opening and closing as if it was trying to get one last acerbic word out.

“Killing Willis is obvious, I think. The other three were meant to get rid of you, pin you for murder and get you out of my way. With you gone, I can take your place and then become Chief Medical Examiner. I’ll finally have everything you have and more. Maybe even Sheriff Harper will want to be with me. You certainly never deserved him.”

Cory swallowed. She was trying to think of a plan, some kind of way to distract Fran long enough so that she could jump up off of the chair and make a dash for the bat, or better yet charge head on straight at Fran herself. She was slight, probably weighed no less than a buck ten, and because she was taller and had more to her, Cory thought she could take Fran out without breaking a sweat. The only power Fran had was that she was the one with a gun.

********

Jon found himself at the back of Cory’s apartment. Louis was beside him, his gun drawn, his breath coming in short quick breaths. The look on his face was predatory, and Jon could see as Louis looked at him that their expressions were mirrored.

Jon stooped down against Cory’s small back porch and lifted a key from a planter Cory had placed on the concrete. It had been a practice of theirs while they were married, that if either one of them had lost their keys, that all they would have to do is to go to the back door and pick out their salvation from the planter. Apparently, Cory had kept to the practice. Jon thought that it might just be the thing that would save her from herself, since he wasn’t doing such a bang up job of it.

Jon looked to Louis. “You ready? We go in quiet. If everything’s okay, we’ll talk to Cory and get her the hell out of here. If, i
f
”

Louis noticed that Jon was having a difficult time getting the last of what he had to say out of him. It would be difficult for anyone to know that there was possibly someone you loved on the other side of a door maybe dead or worse, not to mention if that person had shared the best parts of your life with you. It was almost enough to make Louis reconsider being a perennial bachelor. Almost.

Louis said, “It’s okay man. This will all be okay. I’ll go in first, you follow after me.” He gave a grin before he took the house key Jon was holding and unlocked Cory’s back door. He had the handle turning and the frame inching wider before Jon had a chance to offer a word of gratitude.

********

Cory decided that she’d had enough of Fran’s speech, so much so that she might even consider jumping in front of her gun willingly just to make her shut up. It wasn’t going to do much good in the long run, and she figured she should go with the plan B option. If Fran needed her so much, needed her to pin this whole mess on, then she wasn’t going to go shooting her, was she? It made all of Fran’s threats empty.

Fran now had her back turned to her, as she was entering into another rant about how clever she was for taking Willis out of the picture. Honestly, and she’d never admit this out loud because it was an evil thought, Cory was glad Willis was dead. She hated the thought the moment she had it, but it was there and gone and she wasn’t going to beat herself up about it.

Cory leaned in to brace her legs for the mad dash that she was about to take at Fran’s back when her back door opened. Things happened in such a rush that it was difficult to understand what was happening.

Fran had seen the door open, and just as whoever had walked inside was halfway down the hall that led off from the kitchen, she fired and a pained groan sounded out. Cory could see, the whole house was illuminated like a gory scene inside of a light bulb, but she couldn’t tell who the person was that had been in the hall. There had been a flash of a brown uniform, but Cory kept herself from thinking that she’d caught a glimpse of a deputy’s uniform.

A second shot sounded, but the bullet went wild, and hit against the wall of the front of the apartment. Fran was screaming, her voice filled with a kind of rage that was like an animal out of a nightmare. No creature that walked the Earth could sound like that. Cory took the confusion as her cue to run, but her hip hit against her sofa and she spun at an odd angle and hit sideways against the wall where the couch created the hidden corner.

Three more shots sounded, cries were going up and colliding so that now Cory couldn’t tell who was making what sound, and a searing flash of fire slammed through her thigh and Cory realized she’d been shot. The bat she’d been going after seemed suddenly too far away to reach. She knew she was throwing her voice into the sound that was filling the interior of the apartment, and just before she lost consciousness and the world went dark, Cory would have given her arm on the bet that Jon’s voice was the loudest. He was telling her that she wasn’t allowed to die.

********

Jon paced the waiting room of the hospital, sure that he wasn’t going to survive long enough to hear the verdict on whether or not Cory was going to live. This was too much like waiting to hear the latest diagnosis on David, the newest result of the latest test, and he remembered all too well how that had turned out. If the doctor came out to him and told him that Cory had died, Jon knew that if he didn’t physically follow after her, that his soul would.

He had been at the hospital all night. After he’d managed to knock out Drew Nichols, or as she’d actually been known, Fran Fritz, he’d scrambled to call an ambulance and anyone else that would listen to his hysterical pleas for help. Louis had been hit in the shoulder, the bullet grazing him a bit deep but nothing life threatening. He’d been able to pull himself up off of Cory’s floor and help put a tourniquet on Cory’s leg. A bullet, had hit her, gone clean through the upper muscle of her thigh and Jon had nearly lost his mind at the knowledge that her femoral artery had been obliterated and the love of his life was going to bleed to death. He had been screaming at the top of his lungs when the paramedics arrived, commanding with every ounce of his being that Cory was forbidden to leave him.

The rest was a blank to Jon. The most he knew of the events that followed was that he had ridden to the hospital with paramedics, holding on to Cory’s hand the whole time, refusing to let it go even when the paramedics had told him that it was necessary for him to do so. The only time he let go of her was when they rushed her through to emergency surgery where, if he followed, it would really mean that she would die.

“Sheriff Harper?”

Jon blinked, feeling as if he should be shaking his head, but not quite able to. Sheriff Pence was walking up to him, his uniform hat underneath his arm, his face looking much different than the last time they’d met. Behind him, coming through the doors of the waiting room, was Travis. His eyes were hollow, his face white. Travis had been with both Cory and himself when David had taken his last breath. The expression to him looked as if he was prepared to hear the worst.

Jon swallowed, directed his eyes to Sheriff Pence and said, “How are you doing, Sheriff?”

“Not that good. I kind of feel like an idiot at the moment. I never thought that we had the wrong person, but I’m a man of honor and I own up to my mistakes. I owe you an apology, Sheriff Harper. The girl you apprehended is on her way to the state prison to await trial, after of course having been treated for a concussion from the butt of your revolver.”

Jon didn’t actually care if this man was sorry or not or what news he came to bring him, it was beside the point and moot in the face of what was happening right now. He wanted to say all of this to Pence, to attack him and let the anger flood out of him; the anger at feeling this helpless was paralyzing. He actually did open his mouth to speak, but Travis was pointing to a space behind him and his heart stopped. Cory’s doctor was there to tell him the news.

Jon faced the doctor, his body going numb from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He didn’t know if he had the strength to hear this or not. Travis, thankfully sensed his impending physical failure and was there standing behind him, his hands on his shoulders.

“I’ve seen to Cory’s wounds, which I’m amazed to see, were not as serious as we thought. The bullet went through the meat of her inner thigh, cleanly, and as we’ve sewn the entry and exit wounds to prevent further bleeding, we’ve ascertained that her femoral artery is intact.”

The doctor smiled, warmly, and it was as if he’d brought Jon back from the dead. The thundering in his heart was almost as bad as it’s silence, but in a good way.

He asked, thinking that he might have passed out and was now imagining things, “Is she awake, can I see her? I’m her husband.”

Jon caught Travis’ look and he felt a flicker of amusement. No, he hadn’t misspoken. Cory was his wife, had always been. No decision, no piece of paper was going to tell him otherwise any longer. She’d been meant for him and he’d been too stupid to see it.

“Sure, Sheriff Harper, she’s awake. A little groggy from the pain medications we’ve given her, but aware. However, only one at a time.”

********

Cory’s vision was hazy, but she knew one thing; she was alive and she’d been hurt. She supposed it was bad, due to the level of purple fairies floating around her fuzzy skull, but it didn’t matter. Bring on the pain killers! She giggled and realized that if she started laughing at herself now, she might end up crying her eyes out.

“What’s so funny?”

Jon’s body, leaning against the frame of the door to her room, was like the mother of all pain relievers. He looked like he had been dragged through Hell, but he had all his parts in all the right places and it was the beauty of him still intact that lifted her soul right out of her body.

Cory forced her hand to rise from her bed and she managed to crinkle a finger at him. When he was close, the natural scent of him hit her senses and she closed her eyes. What had possessed her with the will to leave a man that would charge headfirst into danger for her? Or the ability to abandon the one person in the world that had stood with her at the mouth of hell, his hand in hers, as they’d lost their only child?