“I know, but transference happens. We’ve all done it at one time or another.”
“Okay, thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Tam clicked off her phone and turned the ignition key. Marcus was waiting for her at home. She couldn’t wait to see him. He was back in her life, for good this time. Maybe they could start a family now; maybe they could be happy and not just content. She loved him. When she pulled up in front of the house they shared together, she felt an inner excitement that she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
On their way to Folger Parmentier’s house, Will glanced across the front seat as Julia hung up her phone. She shook her head. “You know that hair they found at the crime scene? It was Jasper’s. I cross-contaminated.”
“Don’t worry about it. It didn’t corrupt the crime scene.”
“No, but it’s careless on my part. I’ve never done it before, and I worked the K-9 unit for years.”
“It happens.”
“That’s exactly what Tam said. I’m careful, Will.”
“I noticed. Quit worrying, okay? Everybody makes mistakes.” Will was watching the road as the GPS intoned the directions. “Parmentier’s house should be right up there around this next curve. On the left.”
Folger Parmentier’s property was hard to miss. The house sat on the side of a mountain, forest above it, and the starry night sky was like a black velvet backdrop sparkling with silver glitter. The fields around the house were cleared of trees and underbrush—grassy and open.
“Looks like Parmentier prefers to see who’s coming to visit,” Will said as they turned off the road and found a white fence encircling the place, with a motorized gate and intercom box similar to Will’s.
“This guy’s as security conscious as you are, Will.”
“Except that he left the gate wide open. Not exactly brilliant.”
Will stopped the Hummer beside the intercom, rolled down the window, and pressed the button. He was polite that way. Julia would have just driven on through and forgotten formalities. Will pushed it again, and they waited again. There was not going to be a response.
“There aren’t any lights on in the house,” Julia pointed out. “But the dusk-to-dawns are on around the yard. Let’s go on up. He didn’t shut the gate—he can’t get too ticked off.”
“I can’t figure him leaving in such a hurry that he doesn’t take time to secure the outside gate. Why go to all this expense for security if you’re so cavalier about using the precautions?”
“Good question,” Julia said. “Except that this guy’s a moron. And gets off every charge leveled against him. Let’s go up and see if he’s as arrogant and obnoxious as all his ex-girlfriends testified to on the witness stand.”
Will drove up the narrow blacktop drive and rolled to a stop in front of the house. It was a big white Tudor, with lots of dark, heavy crossbeams. All was dark inside. All was quiet. Not a mouse was stirring, but maybe a rat was.
“I don’t like this,” Julia said, suddenly registering a very foreboding feeling. Her gut was screaming that something wicked this way came, had come, or was coming. When such instinctive and creepy sensations visited her inner psyche, she always paid heed.
Will’s face was as wary as hers. “Maybe the killer’s been here and gone.”
“Yeah, or is here.”
“Let’s find out.”
“Let’s go.”
Julia felt the familiar excitement roll up inside her chest, and her heart was pounding like some kind of crazy African bongo drum. That sixth sense of hers—she was going to listen to it. She would bet a week’s salary that Folger Parmentier was the Tongue Slasher’s next victim. Worse, he might be inside, already done for.
Weapons out and at the ready, they moved together toward the porch. Quiet, stealthy, keeping to the deep shadows. When they got to the front door, they stood one on each side, weapons down, fingers alongside the trigger. Julia tried not to think of Bobby.
“Ready, Cass?”
“You bet.”
“Okay, stay behind me.”
“Yeah, right, Brannock. I don’t think so.”
Brannock reached out and rapped on the door. “TBI, open up.”
More silence. Heavy. Disconcerting. Nerve-wracking.
Julia reached out and tried the knob. It turned easily. She got the door open and pushed it back until it hit the inside wall. She reached inside and felt around for the light switch. When she found it, the dark room blazed with light. It was empty, but they still went in low, guns out front, moving with their backs against the walls. They checked out the rest of the house and found nothing and no one, but they did find a locked door. The key was inserted in the lock, and Will turned it, revealing a stairway down to a lower level. They went down slowly and cleared the rooms, one by one. Extra bedroom, washroom, and storage room. Folger Parmentier was not home, but there was a second locked door with the key still in the lock. Julia turned the key and hit the inside wall switch.
Shocked, she could only stare at the terrible sight before them.
“Oh my God,” Will said. “Parmentier’s got a virtual torture dungeon down here.”
“Yes, replete with blood. Look at that whipping post.”
Sheathing his weapon, Will moved to it, sidestepping the bloody mess on the floor. “Somebody died in here.”
“Yes, but there were no bloodstains upstairs. So where’s the body?” Julia walked to another heavy metal door and turned that key. It opened to the outside and onto a sidewalk that led up the side of the house to the backyard. Julia flipped the light switch beside the door, and the outside path was illuminated by spot lighting all the way around to the back of the house.
“Looks like he brought a body out this way.”
Careful to stay off the bloodstained sidewalk, Will and Julia followed the concrete path around to a waist-high retaining wall, where they could see the backyard pool, glowing like a blue topaz in the darkness. A man’s body hung from a light pole near the deep end of the pool. They both pulled their weapons again and kept down low.
“That’s got to be Folger Parmentier,” Julia said, watching the wavering reflections from the pool’s underwater lights create blurry patterns across the man’s naked body, still dripping blood.
“He’s still bleeding,” she whispered to Will. “If he’s still alive, the killer could be nearby.”
Will nodded. “It’s a fresh scene, all right. Go ahead, call for backup and get an ambulance out here. I’m going up to see if Parmentier’s still breathing.”
“Right.”
Quickly, Julia phoned it in and requested the CSI team. She directed the ambulance as best she could, but she kept moving toward the pool, her eyes on Will making his way slowly and cautiously toward the body, his gun held with both hands out in front of him. She searched the surrounding darkness as she approached the low wall around the pool. Will had reached up and was taking the victim’s pulse, after which he glanced back at her and shook his head. A movement out of the corner of her eye caught Julia’s attention, halfway up the forested hill right behind Will.
“Will, get down!” she cried, going down on one knee behind the brick wall. But her warning was too late. The retort of a gun cracked and echoed through the quiet night, and though Will tried to lunge behind the wall, he was hit and dropped hard.
Julia stayed behind the barrier, rested her arm atop the wall, aimed, and opened fire on the spot where she’d seen the shooter. The echoes of her gunshots rolled through the stillness, but there was no return fire. He was probably on the run. Hunched over, she ran along the wall, keeping very low. By the time she reached Will, he was trying to roll over, groaning and clutching his right side.
“How bad is it?” She jerked a towel off a nearby lounge chair, wadded it up, and pressed it hard against his wound.
Will’s chest was heaving, his words slurred. “I’m okay . . . he grazed me a little.”
Now that she could see Will moving his limbs and speaking coherently, Julia felt better, confident he hadn’t suffered a lethal chest or head wound. “It’s no little graze, Brannock. Hang in there. The ambulance will be here any minute. Lie low. I’m going after him.”
Groaning, Will managed to grab her wrist. “No, Julia, wait. Let the backup get here.”
“And let him get away? Uh-uh. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“Julia . . . stop . . . he’ll see you coming . . .”
Moving out very low, Julia ignored Will, anger pushing her along the wall toward the undergrowth below where she’d seen the shooter. She wasn’t about to do anything stupid, but she wasn’t going to let a killer get away, either, not after he put a slug in her partner. She kept down, listening for movement: bushes rustling, rocks falling down the hillside as the perp’s shoes dislodged them, any sound to pinpoint his location. She heard nothing but her own labored breathing and the siren of a faraway ambulance. When she was about twenty yards up the hill behind the house, she heard a car start up somewhere in the distance. She searched the fields below for headlights, trying to spot a vehicle, but could see nothing. He was gone.
Sheathing her weapon, she ran back to Will. They had been so close to capturing the killer. So close, but now he was on the loose, to kill again. Their backup patrol cars arrived within ten minutes, but the ambulance beat them by three or four minutes. While the EMTs worked on Will, Julia stood back, jaw set, fighting rising emotions as she realized the medics were having trouble stopping the bleeding. The sight of Will lying there, so still now, his lifeblood pooling underneath his body, made her feel weak all over. She loved him. She really loved him, despite the short time she’d known him, despite any obstacles, despite everything. She hadn’t realized just how much, but now, watching him fight for his life, she felt heartsick inside, sick that he was injured, that she was helpless, and most of all, that she hadn’t had his back quick enough to warn him about the shooter.
As they worked on Will, Tam arrived, with the TBI forensic people close behind her. Julia helped the EMTs load Will on the gurney and watched them rush him off to the waiting ambulance. He was wounded, probably worse than he thought he was. They needed to get him to the ER quick enough to save him.
Fighting off her worry and guilt, she tried to fill in Tam on what had gone down, how they had found the body, the downstairs torture chamber, everything that had happened. Her voice finally broke, and her hands shook with delayed reaction—concern for Will, and fury that the perp had gotten away.
“He’s going to make it, Julia.” Tam’s voice was low and comforting. She’d no doubt had lots of practice comforting victims in her tenure at CPD, and she was using it now. “Will’s as tough as they come. Chances are he’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, I know. I know he will. He’ll be fine. But the Slasher was here, Tam. Right here in this house. If we’d gotten here an hour earlier, Parmentier would probably still be alive.”
“That also means the killer most likely left more of himself behind. You surprised him—he had to run before he could clean up the crime scene. Don’t blame yourself for him getting away. We’re getting closer every day.”
Julia knew all of that was true, but she still blamed herself. She tried to get Will’s gunshot wound out of her mind and work the scene as if nothing had happened. She started more than once to call the hospital, but found herself afraid to, fearing what they would say. Oh God, what if he died, just now when they were finding each other? No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He was talking. He was conscious at first. He was going to be fine.
After Peter Tipton arrived and examined, then released Folger Parmentier’s body, they cut down the victim and laid him out flat on a forensic tarp. The word
FOUR
was written on the ground below him, in Parmentier’s blood, next to a set of scales with part of his tongue on one side and the dimes on the other. But the Tongue Slasher had taken more than just the tongue this time. He had enjoyed cutting this victim up. As she and Will had surmised, the actual murder took place in the basement’s Inquisition dungeon. The room was creepy and dark and full of cruel instruments and obscene objects. Folger had no doubt been into every perversion imaginable. The victim lived by the sword and whip and knife, and he had died the same way. For most of the night, Julia worked alongside Tam. About an hour before dawn, she left the crime scene investigation in Tam’s capable hands, along with the other task force members, who were gradually showing up, one at a time.
“Go on, Julia. Go see if he’s okay,” Tam had kept insisting. “We’ve got plenty of people here. We can handle it. Come back later, if you want. Looks like we’re going to be here well into the morning.”
Julia finally agreed to leave, climbed into Will’s truck, and drove down to the hospital on Hamill Road in Hixson. The ER was busy. One woman was screaming and fighting the nurses as she came out of a heroin-induced coma. An unconscious man was the victim of a motorcycle accident. An old woman had fallen in her front yard and broken a hip. Julia walked quickly through the crowded waiting room and sought out the nearest doctor.
The first physician she found was leaning against the nurses’ station. She looked to be in her midforties, maybe. Her shiny chestnut hair was severely pulled back in a ponytail, her deep-set dark eyes looking out from behind large tortoiseshell glasses. She had on blue scrubs and a starched white coat. She was scribbling on a clipboard. There was a spot of blood on her coat, just above the pocket. Will’s blood? The ID card hanging around her neck identified her as Retta Davis.