Where The Bodies Rest: A Heart-Stopping Psychological Thriller Read online

  Copyright © 2018

  RedCrow Publishing

  UUID: d5ad05ee-e5bd-11e8-b2eb-17532927e555

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  Table of contents

  Title Page

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  Title Page

  WHERE THE

  BODIES

  REST

  KATE STEN

  ONE

  ABAGNALE

  MAY 2005, EASTWOOD

  A small letterbox made of shiny metal and wood swayed sideways against the gentle evening breeze. The letterbox had the numbers one and two etched on it. There wasn’t a whiff of anything untoward about the delivery man who had decided to skip past the solitary letterbox, after casually waltzing through a narrow gap in the low wooden fence ahead of him.

  He had a blue T-shirt on. Sewn onto it was a company logo that wasn’t very legible at first glance. There were boxes tightly tucked under his armpit, and his gaze was unflinching, eyes steadily focused on the front door.

  He wasn’t unsure of himself. He was certain that this was the house he was meant to be at. Nodding his head, he crashed the edge of a two pence coin into the firm oak door ahead of him. The door was neat and polished, suggesting it was a new build and someone had probably just moved in. The lucky person/persons probably hit the jackpot and had maybe won the lottery.

  The front lawn was neat and well cropped. There were even sprinklers in place to keep the lawn green. The door knocker was ornate and carved out of the finest of steels. The delivery guy probably hadn't noticed it, or had deliberately opted not to touch the old fashioned contraption.

  ‘Yes… What do you want?’ An irritated dark-haired woman snapped impatiently, holding the door halfway open, her face casually hovering above the glass surface of a mobile device.

  An alarm had just bleeped on chatbook and the dark-haired woman seemed engrossed in absentminded perusal of an update from @FunnyBunny101 that had just popped up. An aloof grin flashed on her giddy face as she trawled through social media pages. She had just read some jokes that made her laugh.

  Her hands were covered in gloves and her hair bunched up inside a scarf. She had obviously been tending to some house chores before the knock on the door had distracted her from that.

  ‘Do you not speak English? Are you lost or something?’ Dark-haired woman muttered through gritted teeth, losing her patience with the delivery man when he did not respond to her the first time.

  ‘You ordered two large pizzas and some drinks to go with that? Do you want me to place them inside somewhere?’ The delivery man scratched the tip of his shoe against the door mat, his head bowed and unmoving.

  The dark-haired woman raised her head, rolling her eyes in an apparent haze of confusion, ‘I don’t recall ordering anything? Maybe Andrew might have done that!’

  ‘Yes, maybe Andrew might have placed the order,’ The delivery man spoke in a soft tone, concurring with the confused mutterings of the dark-haired woman. ‘Uh… You think I could use your restroom? I'm bursting to go in here! Please!’

  The woman stopped to consider what was being proposed for a minute, thought nothing clandestine of what was being requested of her, and bobbed her head up and down approvingly. The latch was undone, and the delivery man was let in.

  His face was still bowed and concealed behind the lowered face-cap above his head. But it wasn’t long before the dark-haired lady noticed the dull, white silicone mask that hanged over the face of the guy she had just allowed into her home after she had managed to tear herself away from the updates on chatbook.

  Fear immediately gripped her, heart thumping faster than a roller coaster, and hands pressed firmly against her chest, over her yellow apron. She instantly remembered the news.

  What was that the reporter had said?

  She had had the radio on before the knock on the door had distracted her from bleaching the toilet. She had remembered something about the police recovering footage of a masked guy that had been invading peoples homes and abducting women. He never ever took men or children. All his victims had been presumed dead. There was never ever any bodies recovered. None that were female, anyway. All the cops ever got from this guy, if this was him, was uploaded clips of him cutting and strangling his victims with nothing but his bare hands like some sort of weird fetish.

  ‘You are him, aren't you? Mister Redford?’ Dark-haired woman gasped with palpitations exploding away inside her ribcage.

  ‘Is that who you think I am?’ A brash chuckle escaped from the delivery man's lips, as he tossed the pizza on the floor.

  He edged closer and closer towards the dark-haired woman. She shuffled slowly, her back against the dinning table, as if she would find safety somewhere at the end of it, or maybe the bad man would go away if she could just about manage to do that one simple task.

  ‘What? No screams? They usually scream - those pathetic mewling waste of skins. Those eyes. Imagine what I could do to those eyes. Poke a fork in them or scoop them right out of their sockets with the pointy tip of a spoon, real slow.’ The delivery man gripped a chair tightly, resting his weight on it.

  ‘You are sick!’ The dark-haired woman raged at him, seething through her teeth in disgust at what had just crawled out from the delivery man's sewer of a mouth.

  ‘Been called that pretty much all my life. Didn’t do nothing but make me even more twisted up inside. You have quite the tongue on you. I wonder... I wonder if you'll be quite as feisty when I cut it out?’ The delivery man stumbled forward towards her.

  The dark-haired woman let out a sharp scream, jumped up on the table and darted across it. A strong bulky hand snaked round her ankle, sent her crashing backwards, her head slamming against flat wood as she fell.

  ‘Ouch! Ouch! Let go you sick bastard!’ Dark-haired woman sobbed, as the masked delivery man tugged unsympathetically on her hair and choked her neck with his other hand.

  She went from green to blue beneath the weight of his grip. Her legs thrashed about beneath him, kicking the air desperately. Her eyes went still and her breathing was inaudible. Her attacker withdrew his hands hastily.

  ‘Not yet. There is plenty of foreplay to be had yet.’ The delivery man, pounded his palms, sounding awestruck by the fact that perhaps he had gone too far way too soon.

  She had not given up the ghost yet but not for his lack of effort. Her attackers intentions was blindingly obvious. He didn’t want to be done with her too quickly.

  ‘I will kill you! I will kill you!’ A fearful but angry voice bellowed, swinging a hammer into the masked delivery man's back.

  He went down in pain, rolling on the floor as he made some animal noises.

  ‘Get up! Get up and face me, you spineless thug!’ Andrew yelled, brandishing the hammer in front of him like a priest banishing demons from an afflicted child.

  ‘She wanted it, you know? She begged for it!’ The battered delivery man chuckled, as blood trickled from his mouth.


  ‘keep talking buddy and this hammer will find a home in your cerebellum. Got it, creepy guy in the mask?’ Andrew shook the hammer at the felled delivery man.

  A faint cough ripped through Andrew's wife's throat, her tongue raking the tip of her dry palette. His attention shifted to her for a moment. He hadn't had the time to check on her in the heat of the attack he had launched on the pretend delivery guy who had invaded their home.

  Without warning, while Andrew's eyes tracked his wife's body for more signs of life, a quick hand wrapped itself around the handle of the hammer, snatching it away from him. The gentler man's head was caved in before he could even think to blink. Clumps of brain matter stuck to the edge of the hammer, after it was pulled out of Andrews head. His collapsed, body laid on the floor, eyes wide open, mouth agape. The freshly mopped floor was soon steeped in red from the fluids leaking out of the murdered man's skull.

  The delivery man smirked and pulled on his trophy - the one he was interested in - by the ankle, tossing her over his shoulder. She attempted to scream, to call out to her slain husband, but got a quick punch to the head for her troubles, knocking her unconscious very easily.

  The killer dragged her limp body out to a waiting unmarked van, loaded her up, and drove off into the night to do with her whatever horrors he had dreamed up especially for her, humming an old nursery rhyme as the engine roared ominously.

  By the morning the usually quaint home was sealed up with police barrier tapes hanging over the low fence and the front door which had been left ajar. Detectives decked in white protective coverings trooped in and out of the building, taking coffee mugs and collecting blood samples for routine DNA tests. The spot where Andrew's body lay was marked with chalk for forensic reasons of course. His limbs could barely be moved out of position. Rigour mortise had began to set in and a cloud of bad smell surrounded the corpse.

  A car soon came to a screeching halt just outside the home where the police had been turning over every bit of furniture to find clues, or at least something of importance. A trim rather confident-looking middle-aged woman emerged from the metallic-blue mazda5, throwing each foot ahead of the other, propelling herself forward in an almost desperate dash.

  A wall of officers stood in the way, as the middle-aged woman with a neatly packed short ponytail pushed her way through them, flashing a badge. ‘Abagnale, DCI Laura Abagnale. Step aside lads, I need to observe the finer details here. The sort of things you lot would miss.’

  ‘And that is why they pay you the big money for all that overtime so you can use it to make our lives miserable,’ one of the investigating junior officers grunted, stepping out of DCI Abagnale’s way, his face focused on the camera in his hands.

  ‘Poor sod, having his head cracked like that in the comfort of his own gaff. What is the blooming world coming to, aye?’ DCI Abagnale snorted, as she lit a fresh cigarette and puffed away, her eyes tracking the zipped up body bag that was being carted away by the forensics team decked in white.

  Abagnale stomped her feet, and sauntered past the officers outside, waltzing straight past the black front door which had been left wide open. Her eyes roamed and searched the walls for anything that seemed to be out of place. There was a slight tear in the wallpaper, right next to a chair that had been knocked sideways. Strapping on some blue gloves, she crouched lower, scooping strands of loose black hair that was hanging off the edge of the fallen chair. ‘That's curious. The color of these hair strands doesn't seem to match up with the deceased's.’

  Abagnale immediately jumped to her feet, almost tripping over the fallen chair as she skipped over it and dashed towards the exit. A deluge of rain descended from hovering dull gray clouds, drenching her clothes, and turning her neatly packed hair into a wet mess. The roaring thunder made her shudder a bit. She hated the crackling noises that came after lightening but her eyes were focused like a woman possessed. DCI Abagnale docked under the yellow-black tape that hung across the vacant gap in the fence, outside the entrance of the house.

  The forensics team was no where to be seen. The van had been loaded and was about to speed off when out of nowhere, Abagnale jumped in the way of the accelerating vehicle, waving both hands in the air to flag it down.

  There was a slight feeling of fright nestled in those bulging deep-blue eyes of hers. ‘Stop! Stop damn it!’

  The van came to a sudden halt a few inches away from her pointy very feminine shoes. She took a few paces to the side of the van, hands on her chest to calm her pounding heart. ‘The body? Did you retrieve any personal effects from it?’

  ‘That was a good way to get yourself killed on the job, pulling a foolhardy stunt like that. And as for personal effects, all we got off the stiff was this wallet and a gold ring,’ The man behind the wheel frowned, hesitantly dropping a sealed plastic bag in Abagnale's hands. ‘Just what exactly do you hope to find?’

  ‘I found hair that didn’t belong on the victim. There was someone else here and I suspect there was a struggle. This ring looks too boring to be for personal gratification and the patterns on it suggests a woman had a hand in picking it out. Our victim was married and I think the hair belonged to his wife. The knocked over chair suggests a struggle. If the wife was taken, that would mean the husband was most likely not the intended target. He probably just got in the way.’ Abagnale sucked in air, breathing intensely.

  There was an unnatural silence between the driver of the van and Abagnale. Then the driver scratched his head and leaned sideways, closer to her and said, ‘This is the third body we have had to collect in three weeks. You don’t think it is the same perp, do you?’

  ‘The bodies you collected? Were they all male and in their thirties by any chance?’ DCI Abagnale shot a probing uncomfortable gaze at the driver.

  ‘Yes!’ the driver nodded without hesitation or much forethought. “Is there supposed to be a connection here?”

  ‘More than you know. The fact that they were all within an age bracket where they would be more likely to be coupled up with someone is more than a coincidence. Our perp must have a unique penchant for attacking couples and taking women. I shall need to look up the missing persons files at the station to see if there are any other leads that can be followed.’ DCI Abagnale raised a brow, tilted her head to the left, and turned to walk to her own car.

  Her head thrown back, and her eyes shut, she tried to soak in the depth of barbarity that she had just witnessed. Her mind could not shut out the raw images of the man with the hole in his skull. If she hadn't been hardened by years on the job, she would have certainly been moved to tears.

  She had not noticed but she hadn't put much effort into opening the door of her car. She certainly remembered locking it. She remembered hearing the distinct noise of the automatic car lock when she had pressed the button on her set of keys on arrival at the crime scene.

  She almost jumped from her seat in terror when she felt an awkward bump beneath her bum. She shimmied off the drivers seat and jumped out of her car, back into the pouring rain, instantly. She almost knocked the shoes on her feet off doing that.

  A forceful smell wafted up into her nostrils from the inside of her car, causing her stomach to twist inside her. The stench of it made her push her palms over her nose to keep the fetid smell from stifling the air in her lungs.

  ‘Breathe! Its just your nerves messing with you!’ She pressed her palm against her chest, speaking a few reassuring words to herself.

  ‘What do we have here? That's odd. Don’t remember that being there.’ DCI Abagnale retracted her hands from her chest, snatching up a sealed paper package that had been carefully placed on the drivers seat.

  Her eyes froze in their sockets at the sight of something scrawled on the underside of the package. She could make out the words - Mister Redford - scrawled with macabre intent on the brown paper packaging. The blood had barely gone dry and thick droplets of it forked through the gaps between her fingers. No doubt, the blood had not come from the deliverer of t
he package.

  The intruder was bold. Bold enough to enter a police officers vehicle to plant something which the person/persons clearly deliberately wanted the police to find.

  ‘Mister Redford. You are certainly not afraid of us and coy enough to drop this in a law enforcement officers car. I get the feeling you aren't scared of getting caught, whoever you are.’ DCI Abagnale rolled her eyes shut for a brief moment, whispering almost inaudibly to herself. ‘I also get the feeling I am not going to like what I find inside this.’

  Tearing the package open with much anticipation, DCI Abagnale held her breath for a while. There was something black and small and square-shaped inside. It seemed to be some sort of generic micro sd card. Inscribed on it were the words - Play me.

  She obliged and stuck the card into her android smart phone. There was only one solitary folder on the memory card. There was a build up of tension inside her. DCI Abagnale somehow, through experience, did not expect that there would be anything palatable in that folder. But she opened it anyway and clicked play on the first video file in the folder.

  ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ DCI Abagnale bit on her nails to keep herself from screaming any louder than she already was.