Connor's Gamble (6 page)

Lifting her limp sated body in his arms, he gently pulled the rumpled sheets from beneath her before lowering her once more, tucking the bedding around her with a gentleness that belied the ache in his soul.

Alyssa burrowed deeper into the pillow, but not before he took one final long hard look at her snuggled beneath the covers.

He started around to the far side of the bed, when Alyssa's words stopped him cold in his tracks.

“Good-bye, Connor.”

Turning onto her side, with her back facing him, she shut him out as effectively as slamming a door in his face.

Gathering up his discarded clothing, he dressed quietly before leaving, closing the door with a distinct yet final click. 

Chapter Eight

Thursday

C
onnor opened the door to his room, fighting the urge to turn around and go back to Alyssa.  To stay wrapped in her arms, spend the night holding her, making love to her.  Instead, here he was back in his lonely motel room, with the ever widening gulf between them expanding with each step he took away from her.

He scanned his phone for messages and missed calls, seeing the e-mail icon pop up on the screen.

This e-mail was damning.  He played the attachment again.  It had to be a sick joke.  Some psychotic yahoo playing a perverted prank.  It couldn't be real.  Yet watching it again yielded the same horrific results.  Connor stood frozen, shocked beyond words. 
What the hell?

A camera shot panned the interior of a room before coming to rest on the nude auburn-haired woman seated in a metal-backed chair.  What looked like wide black electrical tape covered the lower half of her face, wet and shiny from the tears streaking down her cheeks.

Son of a bitch.

Blood spattered across her face, the trail of tears leaving trickles of red against her pale skin.  Slashes and cuts, some shallow across her shoulders, oozed maroon while larger slashes and gashes covered her torso from her neck down across her naked breasts, with larger, deeper cuts gaping open across her abdomen.  Rivulets of crimson ran in an unending path ever downward, out of sight of the camera lens.

The muffled screams ricocheted around the room, terror evident with each movement of the struggling female on the screen.  Within moments, wisps of smoke drifted upward into the frame, followed by the crackling sounds of fire.  Flames, red and orange and yellow leapt up along the wall behind the woman, framing her naked struggling body within the camera shot as though perfectly planned and executed.  Which it had been.

With the press of a button, Connor shut down the video playing on his phone.  This couldn’t be happening.  It was over.

I caught that bastard Trejo.  He's in jail back in New Orleans.  There has to be a mistake.

But he knew it wasn't a mistake.  The date stamp, if it was authentic, showed yesterday's day.  This poor woman had been killed in exactly the same way as the previous three people. 
Is this possible?  Yesterday—no, this can't be happening.
  Yet it was—right there in bold, vivid color.  The only difference was the previous victims had all been men.  Same M.O.  Same setup with the body tied, the mouth silenced with tape.  Same use of fire to burn the victim while still alive, conscious and struggling, ensuring the destruction of all the evidence.

Frantic, Connor checked the e-mail account he'd accessed on his phone.  Scanning through the logged information, he looked for clues to the sender's ID, the images burned like acid in his memory.  The words he read when he opened the e-mail reverberated in his head.

IT'S NOT OVER, CONNOR MY BOY.  YOU THINK YOU STOPPED ME?  THINK AGAIN.

TAKE SPECIAL NOTE, MY FRIEND, OF THE DATE AND TIME STAMP ON THE ATTACHED VIDEO.  I MADE IT SPECIAL—JUST FOR YOU.

OH, I'M SURE YOU'VE NOTICED A SLIGHT CHANGE FROM MY PREVIOUS PETS.  I THOUGHT IT WAS UNFAIR TO ONLY BE PUNISHING MEN.  A NICE CHANGE, DON'T YOU THINK?

I HAVE SPECIAL PLANS FOR YOU, CONNOR.  I'M SURE YOU'LL APPRECIATE ALL THE EXTRA ATTENTION I'M PUTTING INTO YOUR NEXT SURPRISE. 

SEE YOU SOON.  REAL SOON.

Running a hand through his hair, Connor paced the floor at the foot of his unmade bed.  Back and forth, back and forth.  He stared at the phone in his hand.  Think, man, think.

Stopping, he punched a number into the phone, listened to the ringing at the other end.

“Hello?”  A sleep-muffled voice answered, followed by an audible yawn.  Noting the time on his screen, Connor winced but continued on.

“Remy.  It's Connor.”

“Hey, buddy.  Thought you were out of town.”  He heard the rustle of cloth in the background.  “Hang on a second.”  Connor could hear a muffled whispered conversation with a decidedly female voice, although the exact words weren't distinct.  “What's up?

“Is Trejo still in custody?”   Connor's body tensed waiting for Remy's reply.

“Yeah, he's still locked up.  You know he'll try for an insanity plea.  He sits rocking on his cell bunk, calling for his
angel
.  Same thing he's done since they brought him in.  Stares off into space pleading with his angel to rescue him.  Public defender's yammering about bail, but nobody's been too receptive at this point.”

“Damn.”

“Connor, what's going on?”

“I'm going to e-mail you a video file attachment.  Make sure your . . . friend can't see it when you open it.”

“What the hell . . .?”  Connor could almost hear the gears turning in Remy's head, heard the precise moment when he understood.  “Oh, hell no.”

“You tell me.  I'm hoping it's some kind of hoax, but honestly, Remy, I don't think it is.”  By this time the file had finished transmitting from his cell phone.  “Take a look and you tell me.”

Moments of silence ensued followed by a string of curses, words Connor rarely heard from his cousin.  They'd known each other all their lives and he'd never heard Remy curse a blue streak, but after seeing the video—a saint would respond exactly the same way.

A deep inhalation of breath came through the line.  “I need to call Captain Hilliard with this, Connor.  Get the tech guys all over it.  Where the hell are you?  We need to get somebody covering your ass.”

“I'm out of town, Rem.  Believe it or not, I'm currently traveling on a bus full of senior citizens on its way to Shreveport.”

“What?”

“Gran talked me into it.”

“Uh-huh.”  No questions.  Remy knew his gran.  Understood exactly why he hadn't been able to say no.

“There's something else.”  He waited a beat before continuing.  “Alyssa's here, too.”

“Lyssa?  How'd that happen?”

“Long story, my friend, long story.  I'll fill in all the details later.  In the meantime, see what you can find out about that video.”

“Will do.  I'll keep you posted.  Connor . . . watch your back.  Looks like somebody's made this personal.”  Remy paused, and Conner knew what his next words would be before he even spoke.  “Want me to come?”

“Nope, you need to stay there; keep tabs on Trejo.  I'll call if anything comes up on my end.”

Remy sighed but agreed after telling Connor once again to watch his ass.

“I will, Remy.  Call me as soon as you hear anything.”

“I'm calling Hilliard now.”

Connor started to disconnect, but waited when he heard Remy continue.

“Hey, buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“Give Lyssa a big kiss for me.”  Remy chuckled and disconnected the line before he could think of an appropriate comeback.

Smart ass.

Was it a hoax?  Some idiot trying to throw the police a curve?  There was no doubt Mickey Trejo committed the previous murders.  They could definitively connect him to three people snatched off the streets over a span of several months.  Homeless men found stripped naked, beaten and tortured for days before being burned alive.  Police suspected more victims might be added to the body count.  Trejo was a transient, living throughout much of the state.  They'd only connected the three in and around New Orleans proper for sure, but how many more there might be was anybody's guess.

Memories flooded Connor's head with images of the night he'd seen Trejo.  He'd gone running, something he did whenever he was off shift.  Five miles total to the reservoir and back from his house. 
A bleak, empty house without Alyssa there
.

He'd jogged a bit on the runner's path through the park, then set off at a sprint when he reached the edge of the woods adjacent to the park.  Though unpaved, there was a well-worn passage through the trees that runners used all the time during daylight hours.  Still enough light for him to see and not wanting to go back to his empty house, he kept running.  The night sounds had blended into the surroundings and he'd run on, listening but not really hearing.  One sound didn't fit, though.  Something was off, but he couldn't quite place whatever had made the noise.  Slowing his pace, he began walking, trying to figure out what sound was
off.

There
.  A high-pitched keening to his left abruptly stopped.  Unable to see much with the last vestiges of daylight quickly dissipating, he started moving off the well-worn stretch of woods.   Pushing aside limbs and skirting around bushes, he made his way forward.  Another sound, closer this time.  And this time he recognized exactly what the noise was—the sound of a fist hitting flesh.  The distinctive thud was immediately followed by another muffled groan.

A familiar scent assailed his senses, this one even more frightening. 
Smoke. 
Inhaling sharply, he followed the acrid smell, moving faster and faster, scrambling past jutting branches and tree limbs, shoving them out of his way.  The pungent fumes of gasoline mingled with burning wood.

Moving forward, his hand slid into the pocket of his sweatpants, confirming he had his cell phone.  Though he never ran in the park without it, that lifeline helped calm and focus him.

Please, God, let it just be some rowdy kids having a cook out and horsing around.

Whispered laughter floated on the breeze toward him, a chill racing down his spine as he continued running toward the smell of burning wood.  Ahead he saw flickering light partially obscured by the foliage—confirmation of his worst fears.  Grabbing the phone out of his pocket, he dialed nine-one-one, still running toward the blaze.

When the dispatcher came on the line, he relayed what little information he had, gave as precise a location as possible, and was assured Fire Rescue and police were en route.  He hung up and moved forward a few feet, stopping stock still at the tableau that greeted him.

Tied to a tree bare-ass naked stood a man, covered in filth and debris, his matted hair and growth of beard a filthy ditch-water blondish color, although it was hard to tell it was so clumped and dirty.  His chest bowed outward with arms stretched taut behind him.  His ankles and waist were shackled to the tree as well.  The bottom half of his face was wrapped in a thick layer of what looked like duct tape with straggly patches of beard peeking through in clumps.

Huge purple and reddish bruises covered his body from head to toe, the worst centered along his torso and stomach.  Shallow cuts bled down his thighs and legs, trails of blood dripping to pool at his feet.  Deeper cuts across his abdomen and chest glistened a brighter red.  Both his eyes were blackened and his nose definitely broken at some point.  Dried crusted blood rimmed each nostril.  Large chunks of hair had been shaved from his scalp, leaving behind scratched and abraded patches where the hair had been shorn off.

Appalled at the agony the man suffered, Connor took a step forward.  “I've called—”   Pain radiated through him as he was struck from behind, the blow landing across his upper back and shoulders with such force it drove him to his knees.  Falling forward, he rolled onto his back and twisted to his left as the baseball bat whooshed past, striking the ground where his head had been seconds before.  If it had connected, it would have knocked him out—if it hadn't killed him first.

A maniacal look gleamed in his attacker's gaze, the burning trees behind him casting an eerie glow while the crackle and pop of the fire burned on.  Connor knew even though it was the end of fall and the evening temperatures dipped downward at night, lack of rain had dried out the wooded area enough that they'd have a conflagration on their hands it if wasn't quickly contained.

With a yell, his attacker dove straight at him swinging the bat.  Connor rolled on his back, pain screaming through him with every movement.  Bracing on his upper shoulders he raised both legs off the ground and kicked out hard, catching the man on the downward swing.  Both feet caught his attacker in the stomach, catapulting the man back with enough force to knock him into one of the trees.  A loud crack sounded as the bastard's head connected with the trunk and he slid down, the bat rolling to the ground.  Snatching it up, Connor tossed it out of reach.  Standing over his fallen opponent, Connor noted the odd angle of his head, lolling to the side.  Bending over, he pressed his fingers against the downed man's throat, checking for a pulse—definitely still alive.