Page 1 (1/2)

It was in the spring, on a dark April evening, when Detective Thohtmares could in fact make the jump out of the mind and into real life

Unfortunately for him, it wasn&039;t exactly a news flash

Blood was everywhere Glossy and criallon of paint had been cracked open and spastic-splashed all over not just the forest floorbut theleaves

At Veck&039;s feet

All that red shit was not a premium interior latex, however Or an oil-based trim Or a hearty exterior barn paint You couldn&039;t buy it at Home Depot or Lowe&039;s, and you didn&039;t clean it up with turpentine or use it in soht there Leaking out all over the fuck

What had he done? Dear God

Ripping off his leather jacket, he wadded the thing up, knelt down, and pressed it against thesounds mixed with the hard bursts of Veck&039;s own breath as he stared down into eyes that were going opaque Fast

"Did I kill you? Did I?"

No response Then again, the bastard&039;s voice box was probably hanging from a branch somewhere

Shitoh, shitit was like the night his mother had been killed

Except in this case, he&039;d actually come to slice up sootten on his motorcycle, driven out here, and waited in the forest for this psychotic POS to show up - all the while telling hi to take the "suspect" into custody

His palm had told the truth When his prey had finally arrived, his knife had been in his hand, and he&039;din

The Monroe Motel & Suites was only fifteen yards away, on the far side of this thick stand of brush and pines Illuhts, the seedy lineup of rent-by-the-night-or-the-hour was the reason both he and this sieve of a ht

Serial killers often took trophies fro proper e physical representations of the fleeting power they enjoyed over their prey, they vested emotion in the objects or remains of the people they butchered

David Kroner had lost his collection of souvenirs two nights ago When his work here had been interrupted and the police had swarmed in

So of course he would return to where he&039;d last been in control It was the closest he could co he&039;d once had

"I&039;ve called an a to

Shifting his eyes, he focused on the motel&039;s last room, the one at the end that was closest to where they were and farthest from the office An official Caldwell Police Department evidence seal was plastered on the door and the jamb, and crime scene tape whistled in the breeze all around it Between one blink and the next, he sahat he and the other CPDers had found there the night before last: another young wo picked over for

He looked back down The ain, David Kroner&039;s victied sixteen to twenty-four so it wasn&039;t like he needed to be built like a bouncer to get the job done Sandy blond hair was thinning at the crown Skin that had been white-boy pale was now going gray - at least where it wasn&039;t covered with blood

ping into his databanks, Veck tried to re for what had felt like days, a snapping of sticks had shifted his eyes around and he&039;d found Kroner tiptoeing through the pines

The instant he saw the one for his knife, his body had crouched down and then he&039;d -

"Motherfucker "

The headache ca nail into his frontal lobe Putting a hand up, he listed to the left, and thought, well, great When the ambulance came, the medics could treat hiive the to be a stiff by the ti pain faded a little, Veck took another run at reonly to slam teain With the fresh round of agony blooht red bouquet, he closed his eyes, and considered throwing up - and while the to-boot or not-to-boot debate raged in his gut, he figured it was time to be honest with hi-ass hole in it, the fact was, he had come out here to kill this perverted bastard who, as the tally stood now, had defiled at least eleven young woo to Caldwell in the last year

Horrific, of course But aht compared to Veck&039;sown father - who&039;d done that in a three-uys like Kroner

And it was precisely that lineage that had gotten Veck on the horn to not just the ambulance, but his partner at Homicide

As much as he hated to admit it, he was his father&039;s son: He had come to kill Period And the fact that his victi but a socially acceptable filter over the real picture

At its core, this had not been about avenging those dead girls

And for fuck&039;s sake, he&039;d known this night was inevitable All his life, the shadow had been behind hi him toward this very scene of destruction So itHis other half had finally taken over, and hadn&039;t ceded control of the wheel until the violence was done The proof? So, et your jollies on now, he thought at the stuff Because he wasn&039;t going to let himself follow too far in his father&039;s footsteps -

The sounds of sirens bubbled up froot louder, fast

Apparently, he wasn&039;t the only person who heard the approach A man burst out of one of the motel rooms, and raced around the hood of a ten-year-old beater that had open latticework for quarter panels Kind of tough for hi his pants on at the sah-looking wo down herdepartures ood and empty when the ambulance bumped in off the road and halted in front of the office

As the passenger-side lass door, Veck whistled loud and clear "Over here!"

Theinvolved and ducked back inside But the ed over and the a lot And as they zeroed in on him, Veck became utterly calm - dead calm As untouchable as the cold, distant ht

Fuck his dark side He had done this And he was going to make himself pay

Internal Affairs officer Sophia Reilly was going like a bat out of hell in her unh the backwoods of Caldwell&039;s scruffy edges As she rode the twists and turns of Route 149 at a dead run, the fact that she was on her way to a crih speed: She drove fast Ate quick Hated to wait in lines, wait for people, wait for infor a deer before she got to the Monroe Motel & Suites -

When her cell phone went off, she had it to her ear before the second ring "Reilly"

"Detective de la Cruz"

"Hey Guess where I&039;ht now?"

"Who called you?"

"Dispatch Your partner&039;s on s to do - so when he dials in for an aht, and says he doesn&039;t knohat happened to the victi"

Unfortunately, itwas so fa Hoainst a possible suspension for coldcocking a paparazzo who&039;d tried to sneak a pic of a victih

"How&039;d you find out?" she asked

"He woke me up"

"How&039;d he sound?"

"I&039; to be honest"

"You always are, Detective"

"He sounded just fine Complained of a headache and loss of memory He said there was a lot of blood and that he was one hundred percent sure that the victim was David Kroner"

Aka, the sick bastard who had been carving up young girls and saving the bits and pieces The bastard&039;s latest "work" session had been conducted the night before last at thethe disturbance, Kroner had escaped out aover the toilet, leaving behind a tragically messy corpse and a truck full of specied at HQ and cross-referenced nationwide

"Did you ask him if he did it?" As a ated her own colleagues&039; h she took pride in her work, she didn&039;t enjoy the fact that people with her job description had anything to do Much better if everyone, including the cops, were law abiders and played by the rules

"He said he didn&039;t know"

Blackout while co murder? Not uncommon Especially if it was a cri down a debased serial killer And Veck had already proved himself to be a hothead in the protection or defense of victiuy was a brilliant, very sexy hothead -

Not that the sexy was in any way relevant

In the slightest

"What&039;s your ETA, Detective?" she asked

"&039;Bout fifteen minutes"

"I&039;m under a er that"

As they hung up, she put her phone in the inside pocket of her coat, and hitched herself up in her seat For a member of the force to be a possible suspect in aby what Veck had said to Dispatch, the likelihood of Kroner surviving was small - created all kinds of conflicts of interest Most of the time, Internal Affairs folks dealt with corruption, procedural infractions, and investigations into on-the-job competence But in a situation like this, ht spot of assessing whether or not one of their own had co on how this went, shein some kind of an outside panel to make the call But it was too early for that

It was not too soon to think about Veck&039;s dad, however

Everyone kneho the man was, and she had to admit that if that blood tie had not been in the picture, she wouldn&039;t be going into this on quite as high alertwith the worry that payback ht well have been a DelVecchio, as it were

Thomas Sr was one of the most notorious serial killers of ikee twentieth century Officially, he had been charged and convicted of "only" twenty-eight murders But he&039;d been implicated in some thirty more - and that was just what authorities in four states knew about Chances were good there were dozens ofwomen who hadn&039;t been properly linked to him

So yeah, if Veck&039;s father had been a lawyer or an accountant or a teacher, she ht not be quite so concerned But the whole apple-doesn&039;t-fall-far-fro had evil implications when it came to serial killers and their sons

After she went over a squat bridge, the Monroe Motel & Suites was up on the right, and she pulled in, going past the office and the row of roo out with her backpack full of necessaries, the sweet diesel from the aht the tang of the pine boughsas well as the un of fresh blood