It Can't Be Her Read online

  Totally bizarre. And scary as hell.

  Ten minutes later he was finished with her. At least for the time being.

  “You liked that, didn’t you Princess?”

  He roared with laughter and he put on his jeans, then his socks and boots, and finally his shirt.

  Beneath her breath she thanked God he was leaving.

  It was almost as though he’d read her mind.

  “Oh, don’t worry, honey. I’ll just be gone for an hour or two. We’ll have some more fun later, I promise.”

  Before he left he heated up two packages of Ramen noodles on a two-burner propane stove.

  He put it in a bowl and ate it in front of her, sitting on the edge of her bed, all the while conscious she was slowly starving to death.

  He just didn’t care.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, he got up to leave.

  He carried the lantern to the top of the stairs, blew it out, and placed it on the landing at his feet.

  Light bathed the basement as he opened the door and stepped through it.

  She heard the door close and a padlock being snapped shut on the outside.

  Beneath the duct tape on her face Sara smiled.

  It was “go” time.

  -35-

  She’d been working the duct tape binding her left wrist for days, rubbing it up and down the edge of the bedpost any time she thought she could get away with it.

  It was a maddeningly slow process and she’d cursed the tape many times for being so damned sturdy.

  It wasn’t so sturdy anymore, though.

  It was worn paper thin now, and she was confident she could rip through the tape simply by pulling her wrist away from the post.

  That was just the beginning, though.

  Once her left hand was free she’d be able to roll to her right.

  Then she’d use her free hand to take off the tape from the other one.

  Hands loose, she’d sit up and remove the tape from her feet, and would finally be free.

  She’d gone over the routine a hundred times the night before while slowly working the tape against the post and keeping time with Jeff’s snoring.

  She so wanted to try to break free in the darkness, to try to overpower him while he slept, and to escape his torture dungeon.

  It took every fiber of her being; every bit of restraint she could muster, to keep from doing so.

  She had a plan.

  A good one, in her mind.

  A plan which had a much greater chance for success.

  The trouble was it required Jeff’s absence to be put into motion.

  Sara was taking a risk by waiting. She knew that.

  She was taking a chance this was the morning he’d decide he was tired of her and finally kill her.

  If this was the morning she wouldn’t have the chance to escape. Wouldn’t have a chance to see him captured and to get what was coming to him.

  You can’t escape when you’re dead.

  But she was lucky this morning in that he didn’t kill her.

  He didn’t seem to be angry this morning as he sometimes was.

  She didn’t know how to interpret that, and didn’t know whether to fear it. She didn’t know whether it was good or bad.

  Maybe he’d taken a liking to her.

  Maybe he’d decided to stop blaming her, as he seemed to do, for the mess his life turned out to be. Maybe in the future he’d be kinder to her. More compassionate, maybe.

  Or maybe his lack of anger meant something else entirely.

  Maybe the stress was off because he’d finally decided to kill her and get it over with.

  Maybe he’d decided the night before to go and get whatever he planned to torture her and kill her with.

  Maybe when he returned he’d be carrying a blow torch and a chain saw.

  Maybe when she woke up early that morning it would be the last time.

  Not if she could help it.

  She waited for a few minutes after she heard the padlock snap into place, just in case he forgot something and came back for it.

  Once she was satisfied he was gone she tugged with her left hand until the tape finally gave way.

  It was an incredible feeling to feel her hand free once again after so many days.

  A feeling of exhilaration.

  A feeling of freedom.

  With a bit of painful effort she rolled to her right and encountered a problem she’d never imagined.

  As she rolled, her left arm didn’t want to go with her.

  It flopped lazily over her body and onto the right side of the bed, but it was numb and pretty much useless.

  The human body isn’t made to lie in one position for days at a time.

  When forced to do so the limbs first fall asleep. Then they cramp badly, crying out to be moved.

  Then the muscles go into self-preservation mode. They relax and almost atrophy.

  It takes several minutes of movement to get the blood circulating again. To wake the muscles back up, and to make them want to cooperate again.

  Sara wasn’t sure she had that much time.

  -36-

  Jeff Burgess had only been back to Anne’s house one time since her murder.

  It was the day after he’d burned her body. The fire was long gone, but the body still smelled of fresh char. The flies were still shying away from it because the severe burns had kept it from starting to decompose.

  Three, maybe four days hence it would be a vastly different thing, with a vastly different appearance and vastly different smells.

  In three or four days those internal organs which didn’t cook would break down. The body would swell, which would crack the skin. The smell of decomposition would gradually overpower the smell of the burned flesh.

  That was okay with Jeff. He liked both smells.

  For a normal human being, the sickening odors would cause one to cover his nose or vomit. Most people would get as far away as quickly as possible.

  Not Jeff.

  Jeff inhaled mightily to suck as much of the smell into his lungs as possible.

  Then he’d rolled over Anne’s burned corpse. It was still warm on the underside.

  He danced around it a few times, leaving a rut in the soft dirt and ashes of the burn pit.

  Jeff Burgess was many things.

  An outcast. A loner. A killer. A sociopath.

  More than anything else, perhaps, was he was a sick son of a bitch.

  He’d left Anne’s house that day the same way he’d come: through the dense woods behind her house.

  He vowed to try to stay away for a few days before he returned, for coming even once was a gamble.

  The body hadn’t been discovered yet. He was lucky.

  If it had been there was a chance he’d run into one of the cops doing the investigation.

  And that almost certainly wouldn’t bode well for him.

  That was several day before, and as he had with several of his other victims, he decided he missed Anne. Although their relationship was extremely short and one-sided, in that it only benefited one of them, he felt a certain bond with her.

  A decidedly sick bond, but a bond nonetheless.

  As he had the first time he’d returned to the crime scene, he progressed very slowly through the woods.

  He’d never been in the military, but he moved as he thought a soldier on patrol would, were he in a hostile jungle.

  As he neared the area where the tree line would open up into the clearing behind Anne’s house he slowed, then stopped completely.

  He looked slowly and deliberately in all directions.

  He sniffed the air.

  He listened.

  Not only for the noise of forest creatures scurrying about and birds singing.

  But also for dead silence which might indicate such creatures had been startled.

  That was important, for they might have been startled by the sound of cops searching through the trees.

  Once satisfied,
he moved a bit closer.

  Another twenty or thirty feet closer to his destination. Then he crouched down again and repeated the whole process.

  It was a maddening way to travel. It took forever.

  But really, he had all day. He was in no hurry.

  He had only one other thing to do today, and that was to kill Sara.

  He’d tired of her. Had grown bored with her.

  And moreover, he’d tired of Kerrville.

  It was a nice city and all.

  He’d have known that if he wasn’t a sadistic killer forced to spend his nights and most of his days hiding inside a dank and dark basement.

  Sometimes he felt as though he were the one being held prisoner. That somehow Sara had turned the tables on him.

  And as twisted as that was, it enabled him to resent her for it.

  He was getting the itch to move on.

  He’d promised Sara when he left that they’d have some fun later.

  And he fully meant it, though in her mind she probably thought he was talking about sexually assaulting her again.

  And, truth be known, there would indeed be some of that.

  The fun part wouldn’t come until after that, though.

  And it would only be fun for one of them.

  For Sara it would be decidedly painful.

  But alas, it would be rewarding for both.

  For him, he’d have the sadistic pleasure of taking another life.

  For her it would mean a final end to her misery.

  He was close to the wood line now.

  He still couldn’t see it, for the forest was especially dense at this point.

  Rather he could smell it.

  It was the lingering aroma of Anne’s burned body.

  It was very faint now, as the body had been taken away and buried at the Junction compound.

  But the smell of a burned carcass lingers for days even after it’s been moved.

  Especially in a mountainous terrain like Kerrville, where passing breezes are rare and the air is generally still.

  The smell would linger for several more days, unless there was a rainfall to drown the ashes and wash them down toward the creek.

  There, at last, the trees finally thinned.

  Between two tall firs he caught a glimpse of blue and white.

  The white of Anne’s ranch house, the dark blue of its window trim.

  This time he inched forward, his thoughts focused on any sign of movement, any sound coming from the house or the burn pit in the back yard behind it.

  He looked over at the stable and saw neither of the horses looking out of their stall windows.

  The door to the stable was wide open.

  He assumed someone had taken the horses when they discovered there was no one left to care for them.

  He was satisfied there was no one around and broke into the open, then walked to the place where he’d left Anne a few days before.

  She was gone, but he already knew that. He had a clear view of the area from the tree line and could see the black lump which was once Anne Walker wasn’t there anymore.

  It still gave him a thrill to be here. To look down and remember what he’d done.

  He danced in a tight circle around where the body had been, rejoicing that they’d found her and took her away.

  And happier still at the misery they must be feeling.

  After a few minutes he sensed motion. He looked upwards and saw a dozen birds, startled by something and taking to the skies.

  It was time to skedaddle.

  -37-

  They say that everything in life is timing.

  Not luck. Not careful calculation or thoughtful planning.

  But timing.

  And it’s largely true.

  A man might be driving along, minding his own business, and might drive through an intersection at the very same time a trucker who’s not paying attention runs the red light.

  He is crushed by forty tons of screaming speeding metal and dies a horrific death.

  That same man, if he’d gone through the same intersection a minute before, would have made his way safely to his destination and not even know his life had been spared.

  Another man, standing in line to buy a lottery ticket, might wave a woman ahead of him so he can bend down and tie his shoe.

  The next day that same man might look on the front page of his hometown newspaper and recognize the smiling face in a photo.

  The same face as the woman he’d waved through. The woman who purchased the ticket which would have been his. The woman who was now a multi-millionaire.

  That untied shoe cost him a fortune not because it was untied.

  But because it threw off the schedule fate had designed for him.

  Yet another man, sitting by himself in a restaurant, might eat his meal all alone and go on his way.

  He’ll never know that if he sat in that very same spot on the previous day he’d have met a wonderful woman at the next table. They’d have fallen in love and had a wonderful life together.

  Instead he came and went and so did she.

  They say fate is fickle. If that’s the case then timing is fate’s partner in crime.

  It wasn’t a lawman, hiding in the woods and watching Jeff from a distance, who startled those birds and urged Jeff to skedaddle.

  It was a squirrel, running up the trunk of a tall pine tree, which caught a sleeping bird off guard.

  The bird squawked at the squirrel and flew away, which caught the attention of several other birds and they followed suit.

  Everything in life is timing.

  If that squirrel had been just five minutes later in dashing up that tree, the inattentive bird would have gone on daydreaming.

  It wouldn’t have been spooked, wouldn’t have flown away, and wouldn’t have taken several other birds with it.

  Jeff wouldn’t have seen them and wouldn’t have hurried back into the woods.

  And Tom Haskins, pulling his 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 into Anne’s front drive at that very same instant, might have walked around back in time to see Jeff and capture him.

  He might have been in the process of beating Jeff to death with his bare hands when Jeff begged to live and offered to tell him where Sara was tied up and being held captive.

  He might have paused long enough to find out Sara was alive after all.

  He might have gone to the basement where she was being held and rescued her.

  But because that squirrel ran up that tree when it did, absolutely none of that happened.

  Timing can be an incredibly fickle and incredibly cruel thing.

  As Tom opened his door and stepped out of his car Jeff disappeared into the woods.

  He’d never know how close he was to catching his killer.

  In one of his big meaty hands Tom held the camera Scott had loaned him.

  In the other he held a bouquet of wildflowers he’d stopped and picked on the way.

  Sara loved wildflowers.

  She used to go out sometimes and pick them and put them in vases all throughout the house.

  Just because they reminded her that God’s greatest gifts are the smallest of things, she’d say.

  Tom stood over the spot where they’d recovered the body they’d been fooled into believing was Sara’s.

  He said a brief prayer, asking God to wrap His wings around his friend and to take away her pain and allow her to rest peacefully.

  He knelt down and placed the flowers in the ash, then stood and studied them for a moment.

  Such a beautiful thing in such a vile place. It was a study of contrasts.

  Something was out of place.

  Something was different since the last time he was here.

  But he couldn’t place it.

  It would take him another half hour, as he was methodically taking photos of the area section by section, and focusing in on the footsteps on the ground, before he’d notice the rut around where the body had been.

  The r
ut wasn’t there when they’d removed the body, he was sure of it.

  And it reminded him of a similar rut that Katie Jamison’s killer had made as he danced around her burning torso.

  So, the killer had been back.

  But how long ago was he here?

  And would he return again?

  He looked around the area, wondering whether he was being observed.

  The property was surrounded on three sides by dense forest. It would be easy for someone to watch him.

  Perhaps even to aim a rifle at him. To squeeze off a shot.

  To gun him down.

  All without Tom even having a clue he was in danger.

  It was a chilling thought indeed.

  -38-

  The easiest thing to do would be for Sara to start up the generator.

  It would give her the light she needed to search the entire basement for anything she could use as a weapon.

  But her greatest weapon was her head.

  And she used it to reason starting up the generator could be a huge mistake.

  Just because he left the basement didn’t mean he left the house.

  For all Sara knew he could be upstairs, enjoying a cup of coffee at the dining room table.

  And while he might not be able to hear the muffled hum of the generator as it sprung to life, he might have smelled its exhaust.

  It was a chance she couldn’t risk, for it would tell him she’d gotten free from her bonds.

  And while she’d still be locked in the basement, he’d be on his guard and would enter the basement with extreme care.

  And that would foil her plan.

  No, it was much better for Sara to leave the generator off.

  She already had a good idea where some things were.

  The old softball bat leaning against the wall in the corner.

  A section of rope on the floor by the couch.

  He’d taken his knife and handgun with him.

  That was unfortunate.

  It was also unfortunate he carried his lighter in his pocket.

  She had no way of lighting the lantern.

  But she could feel her way around in the dark to find the tools she needed.