CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Laura didn’t know what she had been dreaming about before, what she had done to trigger it, but there it was.
The three farmers, standing around, talking just like they always did. Calm. Not a care in the world, except maybe for their crops. Serious in that old-fashioned way, unsmiling, but not hostile. Working men with workworn hands and sun-faded clothes.
And then one of them was turning and screaming, and starting to run.
Laura half-expected things to end there, for this to be more of a recollection than a vision, a simple replay of what she had seen before. But this time she looked up again, past the man who ran and screamed, up to the two he had been with.
She saw them, too, look over their shoulders. She saw them realize what their companion had seen, their eyes going wide, their mouths falling slack with fear. She saw them turn and run, turn and chase after the first, throwing down whatever they had been holding in an effort to gain as much speed as possible. Running for their lives.
They had to be.
There was no other way to explain it—the sheer panic. They weren’t running to something, the way they might go to put out a fire or save a drowning child. They were running from it, and they were terrified. Whatever it was, it was serious enough to make them think they would die if they didn’t run.
Laura watched, straining, wishing as she always did that she could somehow control these visions. Like lucid dreaming. If she could only turn the “camera” around, making it look further afield, get the chance to see what was in the distance—what they were running from…
The three farmers passed out of her vision. Whatever was coming after them had to be appearing next. All she had to do was wait and she would see—
Laura’s eyes snapped open on the ceiling of her room at the inn, the blaring alarm next to her not allowing her to drop back into sleep. She cursed under her breath and swiped a hand across at her phone to switch the alarm off.
She’d been so close.
She still wasn’t quite convinced whether she had seen a real, bona fide vision or just a dream rehashing what she already knew, but whatever it was, it gave her equal parts frustration and hope. Frustration that she hadn’t been able to see enough, yet again. Hope that this meant there was a chance she would see more, if she could just find a way to trigger it.
Laura sat up straight, realizing the alarm hadn’t stopped. A glance at the screen showed her why: it wasn’t an alarm going off at all. It was a call. She fumbled for it and answered, shoving the cell against her ear and trying to be more awake.
“Special Agent Laura Frost.”
“Hi, Agent Frost, this is Sheriff Ramsgate,” he said, his voice a dry crackle in the dim light of the room. She could see light coming from around the edges of the shutters. It was golden. It must be not long after dawn. “We’ve been alerted to another body.”
“Same MO?” Laura asked, already grabbing the covers and thrusting them aside. Time to get up, to get on. The job needed her. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her stomach dropping into her feet, but there wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself—to wallow in the fact that she had failed someone so badly there had been another death. What she had to do now was her absolute best to guarantee they would be the last.
“Looks like it,” the Sheriff said. “I’ve got a deputy down at the scene now, but I’ll know more when I get there myself. I’ll send you the address.”
“I’ll be leaving in five minutes,” Laura said, ending the call. She grabbed her coat, shoving her feet into her boots, and shuffled to the doorway as she tried to kick them on properly. She caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror at the side of the room above a dressing table as she passed, and tried not to look. She didn’t want to face herself right now, knowing the failure that weighed heavy on her shoulders just then.
Agent Moore was sleeping in a room on the opposite side of the upstairs landing. Laura walked the few steps across to it and knocked hard on her door, then again when she heard no response.
“… Yeah?” Agent Moore’s voice was sleep-bound, croaking and vaguely irritable.
“We’ve got another one,” Laura said. “Five minutes. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
She turned back to her own room to get properly dressed, her mind already planning what she needed before she went to the car, how she would set up the GPS, whether she would have time to grab a flask of coffee to go.
***
Laura passed through the house, sidling past a deputy who was coming the other way with a pile of evidence markers in his hands, clearly packing away the ones they no longer needed. Agent Moore trailed behind her, still rubbing at sleepy eyes as they moved into the back yard—the source of the thrum of activity around the property.
“This is him?” Laura asked, which was unnecessary, but mostly used as a conversation starter.
“That’s him,” the Sheriff confirmed. “I know him. He’s been a local here for his whole life—and he’s got fifteen years on me. Hank Gregory. Widower. He lived here on his own since his wife passed.”
“Children?” Laura asked.
“No, his son died a few years back as well,” the Sheriff said. He made a tsk sound as he shook his head, looking down at the body a few yards away. “Poor guy. He had nothing left. At least there’s no family left to mourn him.”
“Do we know time of death?” Laura asked. “If he was on his own, might it have been days?”
“No, no.” The Sheriff shook his head. “He has a nurse. Comes in every day to make sure he takes his medication, cleans up for him, that kind of thing. She usually makes him breakfast or lunch as well so he has at least one real meal a day. The rest of the time, he just about copes—not enough to put him in a home yet. No one to pay for it, even if he needed it. Anyway, she came over this morning, earlier than usual, and couldn’t find him in the house. Looks like he might have been out there all night, according to Jerry.”
Laura glanced up and saw the ME from the morgue, standing off to one side and jotting notes in a notebook. He nodded at her in greeting.
“Let’s go take a look,” Laura said, directing her comment to Agent Moore, who was skulking around behind her as if hiding from the early morning sunlight. “Then we’ll need to speak to this nurse.”
The Sheriff nodded. “I have her waiting inside, on Hank’s sofa,” he said. “She’s had a shock. I’ll sit with her until you’re ready.”
Laura nodded, then led Agent Moore over to the area of the yard that was staked out with crime scene tape, stopping anyone from getting too close. Jerry nodded to them again and then moved back inside the house, having no doubt finished his initial observations. That left them alone with Hank—the victim.
He was an older man, and Laura’s gut twisted in sympathy at his gray hair and lined hands. He’d never stood a chance, at his age.
Not that anyone would have, faced with the injuries he had. The attack had been brutal and sustained—the slashes across his body and throat attested to that. There was only one visible injury to his hands and arms, which made Laura believe he must have passed out or died before the rest of the wounds were inflicted—there would have been more defensive wounds if he was still fighting as the attack went on.
“God,” Agent Moore gasped out, and Laura turned to see tears streaming down her cheeks. She was looking up at the horizon above the fence, as though she couldn’t stand to look down.
Laura couldn’t bring herself to say something critical. Not this time. The sight of the old man, rendered into something more fitting for the butcher’s table than a residential street, would have been enough to reduce a lot of people to tears. And at least she hadn’t thrown up this time.
There wasn’t anything more the body could tell her until the medical examiner gave his report and the forensics tests came back. There was certainly nothing in the way of evidence lying around in the yard; no footprints, as far as Laura could see, in the closely mowed grass. It hadn’t rained recently, and the ground was solid.
Whoever their killer was, he was good at covering his tracks.