I couldn’t really complain, though.
I mean, who could when you became a New York Times Bestselling Author based on your notoriety for solving a case that was thought to be unsolvable in over thirty-two states?
“Sorry, sir,” the cop repeated again as I passed.
I grunted a ‘whatever’ and headed for the porch, spotting the newest hire, Schultz, now standing next to the chief.
My eyes met his, and I jerked my chin up in recognition. “Schultz.”
“Taos,” he replied amicably. “How are you?”
Then he winced.
I snorted and said, “There’s no love lost between me and Maria. Fuckin’ sucks that it happened to her but… yeah. Bad divorce.”
“You know that song ‘I Don’t Fuck With You’ by Big Sean?” I heard one of the other officers reply behind me.
I snorted.
That song had been written by the rapper about a woman that’d done him wrong. Pretty much the entire song was telling her to fuck off.
I’d gotten that a lot right after I’d broken it off with my ex.
Let’s just say Maria hadn’t endeared herself to anybody at the Paris Texas Police Department.
Not only had she gone out of her way to make my life a living hell, she went out of her way to make everyone’s life a living hell whenever she couldn’t get a hold of me.
That meant making random 911 calls to dispatch when she couldn’t find me because she was ‘worried.’
What the fuck ever.
I was so going to hell.
“Boys,” Chief Wilkerson grumbled. “Get in here, Brady.”
I rolled my eyes.
At any given time, I could be called by multiple names. Taos. Taos Brady. Taos Dean Brady. Or my pseudonym, Brady Dean.
I answered to all of them but my pseudonym at this point because I thought it was fuckin’ weird how people thought I was someone special just because I could write a book.
I followed Schultz and the chief into the house, feeling a sense of nostalgia roll over me.
I’d worked my fuckin’ ass off to buy this house.
I’d done one-hundred-hour workweeks, scrimped and saved, then got a loan for more than I could afford, just so I could buy Maria the dream house that she ‘had to have.’
The moment that I bought the house, which had only been a few years old, she’d immediately wanted to remodel it.
That I’d put my foot down on.
At least, somewhat.
What I couldn’t afford to do myself was left undone. But the rest of the house was all me.
From the front entrance to the wood floors.
The wood floors that had a smattering of blood on them starting in the hallway that led to the bedrooms.
“Shit,” I grumbled. “Is it bad?”
“Not good,” Chief Wilkerson muttered.
He was right.
It wasn’t good.
In fact, it was terrible.
I never, not ever, would’ve wished the way that Maria died on anybody.
The sad thing was, from the way the blood splatter was, it meant that she was alive initially when the stabbing happened.
“Just like the last one,” I murmured, mentally going over all of the information from the previous murder files I’d poured over.
“Agreed,” Chief Wilkerson grumbled. “Serial killer in town strikes again.”
“Fuck,” I hissed.
Then I spent the next four hours going through it all with a fine-tooth comb.
I made sure to take everything in, from the way the curtains were drawn, to the way Maria’s body was positioned.
There were just too many similarities for the two murders not to be related to the others that were part of a larger serial killer case.
The woman alone in a house that was being sold or had just sold. The age of the women—all between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.
The only real difference between them were their skin/hair color. Though each woman had different hair and skin colors, all of them had some degree of curliness to their hair.
“The profiler on his way?” I asked all of a sudden as I stared at the blood.
I wasn’t unaffected by it, per se, but I wasn’t seeing it as a gory nightmare anymore. Just a scene that I was trying to make sense of.
“Sent him down from DC this morning. With two confirmed cases now, they think that he’ll get three more before he moves on to a different state. As long as he or she continues the pattern, anyway,” Chief Wilkerson said.
He’d been standing next to me for just as long, knowing that I needed someone to bounce ideas off of.
Schultz had to leave to go get his nieces from the babysitter, leaving us alone in the house.
Thankfully, the medical examiner had come and removed Maria’s body, leaving me with just the remnants of the vicious crime.
I shook my head and stood up, my head pounding and my back aching.
I stared at the room one more time before I turned to Chief Wilkerson.
“I can’t see anything,” I said. “I’ll go over the notes again from the other cases. But this person, whoever he or she is—and my money is on a he—knows their shit. They’re very careful, they know better than to leave any evidence behind, and have great location choices. This one aside, seeing as my neighbors are awesome, the other houses never strike up curiosity. Hell, the last one wouldn’t have even been found as fast as it was if it hadn’t been for that guy from the electric company coming over to check on their fuse box after that transformer blew across the street.”